Allelujah
by Ari Moriarty
Summary: SEQUEL to "Piecekeeping" and "Messiah." A collection of short chaptered stories and one-shots dealing with the emotional aftermath of the Velvet Room confrontation. While Minako searches for love between Adachi's ultimatum and Yosuke's rage, Yosuke himself finds romance in an unexpected place, and Nanako and Dojima work together and apart to make sense of their newly broken world.
1. Author's Preface

**Allelujah**

**Author's Preface: **Sorry to put the author's note in a totally separate chapter, but I tried to include it in the next one, and honestly too many titles and headers all in one place just really hurt my eyes…this is a lot easier, visually. I swear, I won't make a habit of it, I know it's pretentious, but please bear with. Thanks for understanding.

The following collection is going to encompass and follow the rest of the series that began with **What Cannot Be Broken**, and most recently included **Piecekeeping** and **Messiah**. Because the actual plot-driven conflict is resolevd, all the stuff that remains is more introspective and character-driven, and so I felt that one giant, plot-heavy story wasn't going to really do what I need to do. Instead, this is going to be a collection of one-shots, snapshots, and short chaptered stories which will feature and focus on the characters and relationships from the rest of the series, and hopefully will tie up some loose ends and re-establish or permanently demolish some relationships.

Please feel free to let me know which characters, pairings, or relationships you're particular interested to see more of, here. I do have a plan, but I'd love to see what you guys are interested in. Plans can always be (and usually are) modified, right?

Thanks very much for reading this far, and I can't wait to get the chance to really go deeper into some of the minds and lives of these characters. Character stuff is my favorite! This will be fun

Oh, I said that last time, didn't I?

Well, it was fun, t hen, too, right? So, have I ever steered you wrong?

…Yeah, good call, don't answer that.

Sincerely and enthusiastically,

Ari


	2. Rei(g)n: Chapter One

**First Story: Rei(g)n**

**Summary: **Minako, Junpei, and the rest of SEES take one final trip into the Velvet Room to tie up any available loose ends. In the process, Junpei and Minako share a few thoughts on loyalty and inspiration.

**Chapter One**

Three days after the return of Messiah, Minako and the rest of the group formerly known as SEES stood in the threshold of the doorway that led, ultimately, to the recesses of Minako's mind.

"I'm telling you," insisted Junpei, "there's gonna be nothing there. I mean, what's the point, right? She's got her persona back, so there no reason for any door, or room, or…whatever. So, like…"

Minako shook her head. "Maybe you're right," she insisted, "but either way, I don't think that getting across the nightmare room will be as easy as it was before."

"Huh?" asked Yukari. "Wait, why?"

Minako frowned. "My nightmares are different now," she murmured.

After a lot of heated debate over the past couple of days, Minako had eventually convinced her friends that she wasn't making the wrong decision in choosing to stay in Inaba. At first, they'd been horrified to hear that she wasn't coming with them, but in the end they'd had to see reason, one by one. Mitsuru approved of Minako's insistence that she couldn't just walk away from the position at the police station that she'd devoted herself to for so long. Akihiko and Fuuka, no doubt, were both at least partially relieved that she wouldn't be bursting back into Shinjiro's home town and throwing his life and feelings into a state of limbo again. Ken, who had made some very deep personal connections, in Inaba, seemed inclined to understand her point of view right from the start, and it had really been Yukari and Aigis whom Minako had spent the most time and trouble convincing.

"It's not an option," she'd said eventually, throwing up her hands and sighing. "I broke it, now I have to buy it. I touched people's lives, some of them for the worse. That's not something you just walk away from. It's hard to just forget. I know you understand."

"Yeah," Yukari had mumbled, shrugging. "Yeah, I guess…I guess that's true."

Still, none of them had been willing to leave her here alone without being certain that the trials in the Velvet Room really were over and done with for good. That was why, with only twenty four hours left until they all shipped out for Iwatodai, SEES was preparing to march as a unit into the place that contained the damaged part of her soul, just to make sure there was nothing left to worry about.

"What are we all waiting for?" muttered Akihiko, annoyed. "You guys are taking forever…if there's something in there, let's find it and take it out. If not, then no harm done, right?"

"Agreed," mumbled Ken. "Let's end this, already."

Junpei shrugged, stepped forward, and set his first foot on the ground of the room that contained Minako's nightmare interpretation of the Tartarus tower. "Sure," he began, "then let's just-!"

As soon as Junpei's foot touched the ground, the entire room went pitch black. Yukari shrieked.

"What's going on?" exclaimed Fuuka, inside Minako's mind. "Are you all right? What's happening in there?"

"Mina-tan!" shouted Junpei. "Hey, sound off, where are you?"

Minako, more than a little used to finding people without the use of her sight, didn't take long to grab his hand, which was groping around for her in the dark. She grasped him and pulled him closer to her, bumping him against her side as he struggled to get his bearings.

"New nightmares, huh?" he muttered.

"Sorry," replied Minako.

"Nah…it makes sense." Junpei sighed. "And hey, if something didn't go wrong, things would get boring…right?"

In the darkness, something shifted and made an audible but unintelligible groaning sound.

"Aw, hell, I take it back!" shouted Junpei. "Why do I even say stuff?"

"Great question," retorted Yukari, from somewhere to Minako's left. "Hang on, it's coming…"

Again, there was a groaning sound, only this time it was louder. Instinctively, judging the proximity from the volume of the noise, Minako suddenly ducked to one side, pulling Junpei along with her. They both tumbled to the ground, just in time to avoid the swipe of something large and blunt that just managed to graze Minako's hip as she went down.

"It's okay," called Akihiko, hurrying up from somewhere in the rear of the group. "Don't worry, I got this. Ziodyne!"

A bolt of lightning shot of the sky, and for just a moment the whole room was illuminated by the flash. For that one, brilliant second, Minako got a glimpse of a huge, thick-fingered hand-shaped shadow that was grabbing and reaching through the darkness, searching for victims to crush and mangle.

A cold little chill went down her spine as she remembered the spate of recent strangulation murders, and the man that Tohru had killed right before he'd had a chance to suffocate Minako to death. She could still hear Tohru's insane, madly relieved laugh as she closed her eyes and tried not to picture the one terrifying glimpse she'd had of that blood-soaked scene.

Unfortunately, she hadn't shut the memory out fast enough. Almost as soon as she thought of it, Tohru's worst, most bone-chilling laughter echoed through the darkness of Minako's nightmare room.

"Wow," whispered Yukari. "How do you ever get any sleep?"

"Laughter…should never be so murderous," observed Aigis quietly. "That was truly an unpleasant sound. Does that come from your nightmares, Minako-chan? I…I am sorry to hear that."

No kidding, though Minako. She felt Junpei squeeze her hand in the dark. "Jeez," he mumbled, "remind me that I really gotta make a point of vetting all your boyfriends, from now on. You are…you are just shit at relationship choices, and I mean that like I care."

"Akihiko," called Mitsuru. "Can you give us any more light?"

In response, Akihiko called down another bolt of lightning, and again Minako could see the room for a split second. The glimpse she did get showed her that there were at least three hand shadows, each of them moving relatively quickly across the room in the direction of the SEES members.

"The situation is…less than ideal," muttered Mitsuru, sounding frustrated.

Junpei nudged Minako in the ribs. "Showtime, leader," he reminded her.

Right, thought Minako, taking a deep breath. "Pair up," she shouted, "back to back, so that nothing can take advantage of your bad side. Everybody personas out, weapons ready. Fuuka?"

"I'm here, Minako!" replied Fuuka in Minako's head, sounding surprised.

"Can you tell me what they are?" asked Minako. "Actually, where they are would be great, too."

It took Fuuka a moment before she answered. "They're darkness type," she said eventually, as Minako felt the touch of another huge finger just in time to step smartly to one side. "And Junpei, there's one just rushing towards your…look out"

"Big surprise," muttered Junpei, dodging the blow that Fuuka had warned him about just in time.

"Weak to?" asked Minako, swiping at the darkness with her naginata, and hitting…something ,maybe. It felt like she hit something, although there was no cry of pain or anger, which she usually expected to hear when she hit a shadow.

"Um, light, actually," replied Fuuka. "Seems very…predictable, doesn't it?"

"You did receive your lowest marks in the creative arts, as I recall," remarked Mitsuru. "it stands to reason that the innermost parts of your psyche would be predictable."

"Oh, but you're great at cooking!" added Fuuka, helpfully.

Minako tried not to be insulted. There would be time for that later. Right now, there were other things to take her mind of the embarrassment of having a boring inner psychological sanctum. "Aki," she called, "when I say 'go,' I need you to light up the room. As soon as you see the shadow, Ken, you hit it with Hamaon. Then we wait two beats and do it again. Got it?"

"Got it!" announced Ken. He sounded excited, and it made Minako smile. Even if he tried to be serious and mature, it was clear that Ken, much like Akihiko, got a burst of youthful adrenaline out of a good fight.

"Minako-chan," asked Aigis. "What shall we do?"

Minako thought about that for a minute. "Don't get killed," she said, eventually. Ready, Aki? Go!"

The flash of light came almost instantly after Minako spoke, indicating that Akihiko had already poised his persona for the attack. Ken locked on to a startled, blinded hand shadow, and dissolved it successfully with Kala-Nemi's Hamaon attack.

"Yeah!" shouted Ken. "Hey, did you see that? We got it!"

"Nice," muttered Akihiko. Minako heard the smile in his voice, and she smiled back, even if he couldn't see her.

Junpei and Minako were now standing back to back, and so it was easy for her to hear when he leaned over and murmured to Ken who, back to back with Akihiko, wasn't too far away.

"Hey, Ken," whispered Junpei, with a note of mischievous innocence in his voice. "Don't you think Mina-tan's kinda cute when she takes control like that?"

Minako didn't have to see Ken to know that he'd probably turned an incredible shade of deep red. "Shut up," he mumbled angrily. Junpei just laughed.

Minako shook her head. She'd never quite been able to dissuade Ken of his persistent and ridiculous crush on her, and apparently he was still susceptible to jokes about it, even after years of experience and of being without Minako. "Focus, guys," she commanded. "Aki, Ken, let's try the lighting/light thing again, okay? Ready?"

"Ready!" announced Ken and Akihiko, almost at the same time.

Minako felt Junpei tense against her back as a shadow came a little too close for comfort. "Okay," she said. "Here…we…go!"


	3. Rei(g)n: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

A few more combination attacks from Akihiko and Ken, and the whole mess with the hand shadows was over. SEES was left standing in a still-darkened room, listening anxiously for the sounds of anything else approaching. They kept getting distracted by the crackling insanity of Tohru's panicked laughter, which broke through the otherwise eerie silence at apparently random intervals and sent them all shivering and holding tighter on to their weapons and evokers.

"Ow…" muttered Yukari. "My leg…"

"It is…unfortunate," grunted Aigis, sounding a bit pained, "having to battle in the dark, sight unseen. Minako-chan, again I commend you for an impressive feat. I was not until this moment fully aware of how distorting such a lack of sight can be."

Several of the others were muttering as well, and it sounded to Minako as though her friends had sustained a number of injuries during their harrowing, if victorious battle against the grasping hands.

"Damn," remarked Junpei, perhaps the only one who had made it out of the battle totally unscathed. "I guess I lucked out with a partner this time, huh? Check it out, not a scratch on me. Remind to pick you for my team every time, okay?"

Minako smiled. "We're all on the same team, remember?" She'd dismissed her persona when it had been clear that the battle was over, too busy assessing damages to bother with keeping focused on a persona that , with only part of her mind remaining, she would always have trouble controlling and summoning without passing out. She felt dizzy and a little bit sick, and remembered what it was that Igor had told her that first day in the Velvet Room, when she'd summoned Messiah to revive Tohru, and had found herself almost collapsing because of it.

"Messiah," she whispered, closing her eyes and wincing at the stab of exhaustion that shot through her and threatened to down her as the persona came back into being. "Salvation."

There was the soft sound of Messiah's movement as it took flight from the depths of Minako's soul. Minako smiled as she listened to the relieved sighs of her friends as they, one by one, received the healing rush that came from Messiah's power.

"You're a lifesaver, Minako," muttered Akihiko gratefully.

"Tell me something I don't know," retorted Junpei, sounding proud. Minako frowned.

As the rest of the team made its way haltingly towards what was, presumably, the other side of the room, Minako and Junpei hung back.

"Don't you think it's kinda weird," he asked her, "how this place is supposed to show your worst nightmares…but it doesn't? It only shows you the scary stuff that you see in your dreams, but not the big, awful, mind-blowingly horrible stuff that you see just before you wake up, you know?"

That was a deep sentiment, coming from Junpei, and Minako took a moment to think about it. At first, she wanted to contradict him. Tohru's terrifyingly murderous laughter, the tower of Tartarus and the seal beyond, the blackness of being blind…those things were terrible enough for her. The more she thought about it, however, the more she remembered other dreams, dreams so scarring and terrible that she'd never allowed herself to think about them during the light of day, because they never felt like dreams when she woke up. Instead, the felt like reality that had tried to take over her subconscious, with images so sure and tangible that they'd made her scared to even try to go back to sleep that night.

"Yes," she admitted. "Yes, you're right. I wonder why that is?"

Junpei grunted noncommittally. "Dunno," he said. "Maybe tough dreams are too hard for the shadows to figure out. Like, my worst nightmares always have a ton of people in them…so I guess that's too much for the shadows to put together. Easier for them to get the simple stuff, like thunderstorms, and cars, and…you know, stuff that they can be without having to try too hard."

That, thought Minako, would be a remarkably simple solution…and it also made perfect sense. Trust Junpei to come up with the one obvious thing that no one else had been able to figure out.

"Junpei," she began. "What are your nightmares like? I mean, the really bad ones?" She wasn't sure why she asked. Maybe it was something about the way his voice changed when he brought up that subject. It lost some of its usually casual tone.

"Wha-? Who the hell asks a question like that?" Junpei stammered. "Seriously, a man's dreams are personal. Or, uh…I guess they used to be. Seems like a stupid thing to say right now, huh?" He laughed, a little deprecatingly, and then sighed. "Tell you what, I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"Done," agreed Minako instantly.

"Oh." Junpei sounded a bit surprised. "Somehow, I think I was hoping you were gonna say no…"

Now, Minako was starting to get really interested, a little bit worried. "What's so bad that you can't tell your best friend about it?" she asked him. "Don't tell me that you're having _that_ kind of dream about someone we know…I mean, someone who isn't Rise."

"Hey! You said that we were talking about nightmares!" insisted Junpei. "That stuff's got nothing to do with nightmares…and anyway, there's no way I'd tell you about that. Even with his best friend, man's gotta have some boundaries, and shit."

Minako nodded, and waited.

"Yeah, um, so…" sighed Junpei. "Listen, you're not gonna like this, but…it's always you. I mean, how could it not be?"

"Me?" asked Minako, not sure she understood. "Wait, I'm your worst nightmare? That's…seriously?"

"What? No, no, not like that," insisted Junpei hurriedly. "No, not…not you, exactly, but, uh…look, I really hate bringing this up, but…I have lots of bad dreams about that one day in March. You know which one. Uh, not that you were 'there' or anything, cause you were sort of…'gone' already by the time I…you know what, forget it, I don't really want to talk about this. Forget I said anything."

Minako didn't need him to go on. She knew exactly what he was talking about, and she had entertained many similar dreams, about her last day on earth, before she'd joined with the Great Seal. She dreamed about the way the sun had looked that day, in the sky, and the sad, puzzled look on Aigis' face when Minako had told her not to cry.

She knew, of course, that she was lucky. Those were the things that she remembered, but her friends would have had other things to remember, things that both started and ended with her dead body baking in the sun on the rooftop. There was nothing she could do about that, nothing she could say to make those memories go away. There were no more apologies. As Junpei had made her painfully aware of, one day at Daidara's, she wasn't really sorry, in the end. Of course, she was sad that she'd caused them pain, miserable about it, in fact. She wasn't, however, sorry that she'd made the choice. She couldn't be. It had been the only right choice to make.

"Okay," she told Junpei. "You told me. Now it's my turn."

"Yeah?" asked Junpei. "Okay, let's hear it. I bet you dream about the same thing, right? That day, on the-!"

"No," interrupted Minako, shaking her head. "I do, but…that's not the worst one." She took a deep breath, calling to mind some things she usually tried exceptional hard not to imagine. "Ever since the day when we re-sealed Nyx, when all of us, SEES and the Inaba team were standing around at the base of the tower, I dream about you."

"Yeah, well," mumbled Junpei, "I mean, not surprised…after all, who wouldn't dream about me? I am pretty much a girl-magnet. Don't tell me, you probably dream about me without-!"

"Shut up," commanded Minako, doing her best to stifle a laugh. "You wish!" The laughter took some of the gravity out of the story she was telling, but also lightened the mood enough o make her really feel a bit better. She relaxed ever so lightly, as she finished her story.

"In my dream," she went on, "You're always standing there, holding your evoker to Nanako-chan's head, just like you did in real life."

"Ugh," muttered Junpei. "That one…right."

"And we're all staring at you," continued Minako. "Yosuke's shouting, and everyone's panicked, just like…but then, Naoto comes forward, and Naoto has a real gun." This was the hard part, and Minako found herself choking up a bit as she tried to get all of the words out. "She shoots you, and then you fall to the ground, and you drop Nanako, and you're bleeding all over the place, and then…"

Minako felt the tears starting to well up in her eyes. Before she had a chance to say another word, Junpei had his hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah, I think I've heard enough of that," he told her. "That's…wow, that's pretty vivid. Seriously, Mitsuru-senpai was wrong about you, you've got a pretty crazy imagination…sheesh."

"Yeah," whispered Minako. "Maybe you're right." It never felt to her as though it was imaginary. Whenever she had that dream, it always felt very, very real.

Junpei started walking across the room, following the rest of SEES, and Minako trailed after the sound of his footsteps.

"Why Naoto?" he asked suddenly.

Minako shrugged. "Who knows? I…I really have no idea, I actually like Naoto. Maybe it's because she carries a gun…"

"Or maybe," mused Junpei, "It's because she's really scary. I mean, come on, let's face it, she's good in a fight, but she is one scary chick."

"I don't think she's so scary," murmured Minako, feeling she really did owe it to Naoto, especially since it had essentially been Naoto who had held Yosuke back during that horribly moment three days ago during their confrontation.

"Dude," said Junpei. "You're the one who has creepy nightmares about her, not me. Then again, now that you've said something, maybe I'm gonna start having dreams too…why did we start talking about this, again?"


	4. Rei(g)n: Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

"Where's the door?" called Yukari. "Hey, I can't find it anywhere."

"Are we even in the right place?" muttered Akihiko. "I mean…I can't see anything…maybe we're on the wrong side of the room, or something."

Another blast of lightning from Akihiko's persona illuminated the area, and showed them all that they were, at least, at the direct opposite end of the room from the door that led back into the Velvet Room itself.

The lightning flash also showed Minako that the re-interpretation of Tartarus that came from her mind was still standing in the center of the room, although some amazing twist of luck and fate had led the entire party away from it during their battle against the hand shadows.

"So…." Began Yukari, "does that mean that Junpei was right? There's nothing here? It's all over?"

"Presumably," murmured Mitsuru. "It does…seem to be that way. But, what about Narukami? He, too, had a chamber here, one that was connected to his mind. Have they both…simply vanished? It seems strange…I do not trust it."

As Mitsuru led a further exploration into the apparent disappearance of the mind chambers, Minako left the group and headed for the tower.

She was aware, of course, that the tower wasn't real. At least, it was only real inside her mind, and she knew that anything which existed inside it was nothing more than a representation of the way things might work in the real world. That, of course, meant that when she opened the door at the top of the tower, there could be anything there. Whatever she could imagine or dream of in her wildest nightmares might be behind that door and yet…even as she knew that, even while she was sure of it, she wanted to check. Parts of her mind seemed to be vanishing, if the others were right about there being no more mind chamber at all. The seal needed tos till be there. Even if the real seal was elsewhere, Minako knew she'd sleep better at night, possibly a lot better if she opened that door and found the seal where she expected it to be.

"We have been here before," murmured Aigis. Minako reached out in the darkness and felt Aigis' mechanical form alongside her.

"Yes," agreed Minako. "That's true. But….things were different, then."

"No," replied Aigis thoughtfully. "I disagree. Once, your life was in danger. It was my duty to protect you. Now, your heart is in danger. The same duty befalls. It is harder, now, because we must protect you in a new way….and I do not think I know how. I think we are all wondering how. Do you understand?"

When Aigis spoke about protection, Minako thought back to lengths that Aigis alone had been willing to go to in order to rescue Minako from the seal. Part of Yosuke's anger at Minako came, she was sure, from an anger at Aigis, an anger that he had trouble directing at Aigis, whom he looked at, erroneously, as a robot without feelings, who wouldn't understand what anger was. Aigis herself was something that Yosuke struggled to deal with, and that on top of everything else just added fuel to the fire of the hatred that Minako was struggling to force herself to accept. In the end, she had to accept it, because she couldn't truly argue with it. Minako had been a victim, an unsuspecting victim, in a way. Aigis had been a murderer. She had killed Yu in order to bring Minako back, and there wasn't a way around that.

"Why'd you do it?" she asked. "I was so angry at the time, angry that I wasn't allowed to enjoy this. Why did you risk so much to bring me back? Not just your own life, but someone else's? Why would you do something like that? Junpei, too, he….with Nanako. Both of you, all of you, why?"

It took Aigis a long moment to respond, and through the silence they both listened to the sounds of their friends arguing about the missing door.

"Because," Aigis said finally, "I believe that you would have done the same for us. Am I incorrect in my assumption?"

Minako opened her mouth to say that yes, she would never kill someone to rescue someone else. That was wrong, intrinsically wrong, even if it hurt unbelievably to lose someone that she loved. Suddenly, the dream that she'd been talking about with Junpei came swimming back into her head, and she remembered what it felt like to see Junpei lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor. She remembered what happened at the end of the dream, the part she'd never intended to tell Junpei at all. At the end of the dream, she turned on Yosuke and the others, and she slaughtered them mercilessly, which was just as horrible, because when she woke up both Junpei's death and the death of the rest of her friends felt so real. It felt real, she knew, because somewhere, deep in the parts of her heart that would never be perfect, she believed it. It was true. She would fight for him, and she would kill for him, and for any of the others that they dared to take away from her.

"No," she whispered, nodding once. "No, you're not wrong."

Beside her, Aigis shifted slightly, and Minako thought she could hear a smile in her voice. "Then," replied Aigis, "I am not ashamed."

Aigis began walking back towards the others, and Minako turned to follow her. Just before leaving the tower, Aigis stopped for a moment.

"You are our leader," she reminded Minako. "We are…humans, I think. I am…as human as I will ever be. That means that I do not follow blindly. I do not follow without cause. A leader is someone who inspires trust. I follow, and Junpei-san follows because we know that you are there for us, and that you fear for us, and will fight for us. We will therefore fight for you. Do not worry. I know that we are right. I am…confident in my choices. In your choices."

With that, Aigis left Minako's side, and for a moment, Minako lingered, savoring the silence and the words that were still echoing around in her mind.

**Fin. **


	5. The Third Question

**Second Story: The Third Question**

**Summary: **Dojima goes alone to confront Adachi in the Velvet Room. He has new questions, and for the first time, Adachi might have answers. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Dojima and Adachi

That night in early January, Ryotaro Dojima put Nanako to bed at nine o'clock. He read her a bedtime story, kissed her on the forehead, and then climbed the stairs back to the living room, where he found Yu sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

"I'm going out," he said.

Yu looked up at him. "Okay," said Yu. "Are you sure?"

It was a strange question, and Dojima wasn't certain at first how to answer it. The way Yu was looking at him, he got the creepy sensation that his nephew could see straight through his eyes and into his soul, in a bizarrely and alarmingly mature way that no teenage kid should have been able to look, not even a magical one like Yu.

"Yeah," he muttered. "I'm sure. Do me a favor; check on Nanako before you hit the sack tonight. Oh, and don't stay up all night, either. We've got a train to catch in the morning."

"Okay," agreed Yu. "Goodnight."

"'Night," said Dojima, before pushing open the door and stepping out into the deserted, late-night Inaba street.

He could have taken the car, but he didn't. The car would have gotten him there faster, but concentrating on the road, even when there was nobody else on it, took focus. Dojima wanted space to think, to figure out what he was going to say and just how he was going to say it. After everything that had taken place lately in and around the Velvet Room and the TV world, Dojima wasn't totally certain even what questions he now needed to ask. Things that had made sense before were foreign now. The world was a new place, with new possibilities, and new fears. There were things he wanted to believe. There were things he was afraid to believe.

He stalked down the sidewalk through the shopping district, and up to the Velvet Room door. Yu had said that only persona users should be able to find it, but for some reason now, Dojima could see it too. When he pushed it open, it swung away before him, and he stepped into the vaguely blue, suspiciously elegant place that all the bad things in his nightmares these days seemed to come from. Igor, that weird, long-nosed older guy, didn't seem to be there. Instead, Dojima found himself staring at the silent, brooding back of one of those same nightmares.

"Adachi," he barked.

Slowly, Tohru Adachi turned around. It was strange, thought Dojima, in the detective part of his mind that had managed to detach itself from the hatred. Adachi looked…older, somehow, than he had when Dojima had called him partner, or even when he'd held him captive at the station. There was something sunken and desperate in Adachi's face that Dojima had never noticed before, if it had even been there to begin with.

"Heh," mumbled Adachi. "So…you're here, huh? Guess I knew that was gonna happen, sooner or later."

"Yeah," agreed Dojima, lamely. Suddenly faced with Adachi like this, he wasn't as confident as he thought he'd be. The guy looked more human now than he ever had before, even in this environment which was so weird, twisted, and wrong. Maybe that was the reason. Adachi's humanity stood out in this place, in a way that it might not have in parts of the world that Dojima was more ready to understand.

"So, what do you want?" asked Adachi. "You gonna arrest me again? Cause, I gotta be honest with you, it wouldn't work. I can't leave this place for very long. Signed a contract, keeps me from running away." He shrugged. "I mean, if you want to try, I'm game, but…"

"I have questions," said Dojima.

"Oh, sure," sighed Adachi. "Yeah, you usually do. Man…what a drag."

Stretching both arms over his head and yawning dramatically for emphasis, Adachi strode over and flopped down in Igor's abandoned chair. Crossing one leg over the other, he leaned back, and spread his arms wide in a magnanimous gesture.

"Shoot," he said. "You can have…three questions. Yeah, three questions. Go for it."

Dojima blinked. "Why three questions?" he asked. "Why?"

Adachi frowned. "Who knows? That's how many I feel like answering today. You gonna take it, or leave it?"

Instinctively, Dojima thought about shouting at Adachi, insisting that he retract that arbitrary number. Dojima was, after all, the senior partner, the man in control, the only one of them on the right side of the law, and the one with the legal authority. Still, that didn't matter here. None of the real world laws seemed to apply here, which was evident just by Adachi's continued presence in the room. It would be a waste of time to try and bend this place to Dojima's will, especially since Adachi's status as the whatever of this Velvet Room might actually give him some power that Dojima wasn't expecting. He'd have to be cautious, maybe play Adachi's game. That rankled, and he scowled, but there wasn't any way around it.

Dojima cleared his throat. It was easier, he realized, if he didn't try to make eye contact with Adachi. Just looking at him made his blood start boiling, and something else, something like misery began to pool at the back of his soul. "Why'd you run?" he asked, his voice coming out raspy and gruff, hiding the feelings that he was working against.

"When?" asked Adachi languidly. "The first time, or the second time?"

"Both," clarified Dojima. "No, nevermind. When you ran from the prison, why did you-?"

"Ah, whoa!" interrupted Adachi, holding up a hand. "Hey, be careful how you phrase that. You don't want it coming out sounding like your second question, right?" He grinned, and Dojima glowered at him.

"Answer it," grated Dojima.

Adachi nodded slowly. "Yeah, fair. Okay." Frowning for a moment in thought, he bit his lip. "Tough question, detective. Looks like you haven't lost your edge. Good for you." He laughed, and Dojima felt as though he was being mocked, although he wasn't really surprised. "Anyway, I didn't really plan on running, for a while there. Nah, after Inaba, I was ready to be a model prisoner…ready to take what I got, and like it. Well…okay, maybe I never liked it, but…I guess part of me felt like I deserved it, in a weird way. I'm not…exactly sorry. I won't go that far, but…I was gonna suck it up."

This time, Dojima didn't say anything. He'd figured out the rules of the game. Instead, he waited for Adachi to quit stalling and get to the point.

"You know what they say about hope, right?" Adachi went on. "Hope…it came from Pandora's box, or something. From the place that we got all that bad shit from, lies, and cheating, and death, and…all that other stuff. Hope's like that. It makes you feel like you've got a chance at winning, even when you know you really don't. I guess that's why I ran. It was after I saw in some newspaper that Yu had died. I was like…how is that possible? Yeah, I wanted to know if it was true, but it also got me thinking…life's short, and his was…his was short as hell. He'd said some weird shit about me still having a chance, and I thought…maybe he was right. Maybe I could start over." Adachi shrugged. "Well, look how that turned out, right? I guess in the end, hope's what did me in... Whoa, that's kinda poetic…yeah, I like it." Again, he laughed. "Okay, next question."

Dojima wasn't sure he believed that. He'd heard before, from Adachi, that he'd escaped just for a chance to see if the news and rumors about Yu's death were true. In Dojima's mind, he could picture the scene of Adachi getting the paper in his prison cell, and turning to the article that talked about Yu's untimely and mysterious death. In Dojima's mind, the story always ended differently from the way Adachi described it. In his mind, he saw Adachi laughing and grinning at the article, amazed and delighted to find that the enemy who'd locked him up had gotten what was coming to him after all. Just thinking about it made Dojima grit his teeth, and shake his head, trying to force the images out and back to the depths of unconscious reverie where they belonged.

"Why didn't you kill me, when you had the chance?" asked Dojima. "In the hospital, when you and I were there, alone…you could have thrown me into the TV and no one would have had any idea what had happened. You would have walked away from that without a scratch, and I would have been off your back. Why didn't you? You didn't think I was a real threat? You didn't I would figure it out?"

That seemed to take Adachi momentarily by surprise. He raised an eyebrow at Dojima. "Wait, you…you think I was gonna kill you? No…jeez, you still don't get it. Ameno-sagiri, or the power of persona, or whatever it was that got a hold of me…it wasn't random. It didn't just make me start randomly killing people, it was…it has to do with desire. The things I really wanted suddenly seemed like insanely good ideas, even though if I had my right mind sorted out, I would have seen why they weren't…maybe. Probably. I got angry. I wanted to hurt people. I wanted to hurt those women. Hey, some days, I still do. Maybe they did deserve it, maybe they didn't, and I'm not the one to ask. But…jeez, Dojima-san, what would I want to kill you for?"

For the first time, Dojima listened to that story without trying to shut Adachi up. He'd heard about persona and the TV world, and Ameno-sagiri from Adachi before, but when they'd last gone through this, it had seemed like a bunch of made-up fairytale crap. He'd hated just having to listen to it. Now, though, now that he'd seen the TV world for himself, it made sense, and he hated the fact that it made sense. Things that had been black and white and so obviously evil were suddenly uncertain and frustrating. He hated this place, hated it just as much now as he had the first day that Hanamura kid had knocked him in here. Maybe even more. Definitely more, in fact.

"I was going to find you out, sooner or later," insisted Dojima. "You had to know that."

"Not exactly. I mean, it's not like it was really you who caught me, even you gotta admit that," Adachi reminded him. "But, hey…seriously, that's what you think? You…still don't have a clue, do you? Dojima-san, I would have killed…okay, maybe that's a bad phrase to use here, but I would have killed just to have you give me a couple of words of praise. I wanted you to like me; I wanted you to tell me that I was going places with my career. I looked up to you…and you never got that, not once. You never had shit to say to me except that I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to kill you, I wanted to be you. Sure, it made me angry, but…man, forget it. I wish I hadn't said any of that. Well, it's out now. In the end, doesn't matter much, I guess." He shrugged, then added, with a mischievous glint in his eye, "hey, you ever think about this? Maybe if you'd had some of that praise for me, maybe if you'd given me some of what I wanted, I wouldn't have gone so nuts. Maybe I would have been satisfied enough not to kill those people. You ever think about that?"

All the time, thought Dojima, although there was no way in hell that he was going to say that out loud.

"Yeah, well, don't," muttered Adachi. "I'm just being a pain in the ass. Trust me; it wouldn't have made a difference. It was kind of out of both our hands. Hey, might have made it worse, actually, because if you'd given me what I wanted, I wouldn't have had to want it anymore…then, maybe I would have killed you. Who knows?" He sighed. "You know, I actually really liked the idea of being partners. It was you who never got what that meant."

That barrage of contradictory information left Dojima reeling. He spent a few moments trying to process it, while Adachi waited, watching him.

"You know what?" asked Adachi. "This is kinda bringing me down. You got one more question, so hurry up and ask it before I decide to go off and kill some shadows or something. Clock's ticking."

As soon as he'd asked the second question, Dojima had thought he'd known what his third question was going to be. It was originally going to be about Nanako, about why she'd been targeted. That was the logical question to ask, although Dojima wasn't sure that he even really wanted to know the answer. It didn't matter, either way, because when he opened his mouth, a question came out that even he hadn't realized was lying in wait.

"Do you love her?" he asked, surprising himself. "Arisato. Do you love her?"

Adachi's mouth fell open in shock. "Wh-what the hell?" he stammered. "That's your question? Why…why the fuck do you even want to know?"

Dojima didn't have an answer to that, but he decided it would be better not to let Adachi know. Instead, he just sat there, impassively, waiting for his answer, while his mind worked behind his eyes to try and sort out where the hell that had even come from.

Adachi's face contorted suddenly, and there was pain, genuine pain and sadness in its hardened lines. It was a human pain, a pain that Dojima could feel himself responding to and recognizing at his very core. He knew what that look meant. It was a look he could have seen in the mirror, after meeting Chisato for the first time and realizing that he had feelings for her so strong that he couldn't keep them at bay. It was a look that he saw every now and then when he closed his eyes and looked into the depths of his own tortured mind, a look that meant loss and anguish, and desperation, a look that meant there were some things that no amount of bravado could push or force away. It was the most real thing that Dojima had ever seen in Adachi's eyes, eyes that suddenly and irrationally were reflecting his own.

"Yeah," muttered Adachi. "I do. I love her."

Dojima almost said something, almost forgot himself and stepped forward to try and comfort a man who was instantly a member of his own kind again. It was only when he shook himself and remembered who he was talking to that he got a hold of his intentions and forced himself to stay put and silent. This was Adachi, the murderer, the betrayer, the Judas who had ruined his life. This man wasn't worthy of his sympathy.

"That's it," mumbled Adachi, standing up and turning away again. "That's all you get. Now get out."

There was something dangerous in Adachi's voice, something that had Dojima's hand immediately on his gun which was still in his belt. Adachi, however, made no move towards Dojima, and after a tense beat, Dojima decided to head back into the shopping district.

He was at the door, ready to push it open, when something turned him around and prompted him to speak. "Adachi," he called.

"Yeah?" asked Adachi, sounding strained. "What?"

Dojima shook his head, and left the room.

As he walked back home, it started to rain, which somehow seemed lke it fit the scene that was playing out over again in Dojima's head. He turned corner after corner until his hand was on his own doorknob, and he knew before he went in that he'd find Yu awake, still on the sofa despite his orders, waiting up for him.

"Hey," he called, pushing open the door. "I'm home."

The humanity of that moment in Adachi's eyes would not, he knew, help him sleep any better at night.

**Fin. **


	6. Carrying the Torch: Chapter One

**Third Story: Carrying the Torch**

**Summary: **Ken finds Kanji brooding alone at Junes, and they share a moment of crush-induced sympathy. This results, ultimately, in a messy display of masculinity from several members of both teams.

**Character Focus: **Kanji, Ken, Junpei, Yu

**Chapter One**

Ken was wandering around the Junes food court, considering a topsicle, despite the cold weather, when he noticed someone hunched over miserably at the far corner table. He hazarded a few steps closer, and saw what he'd already guessed to be true. The spiky, blond mass of brooding dejection in the chair was Kanji Tatsumi.

"Um…hey, Kanji-san," called Ken. "Are you, um…are you okay?"

Kanji, with all of his tattoos and menacing eyebrow raises, wasn't the sort of guy that Ken would usually want to get to know. When Ken had first met him, his instinct had been to steer as clear as possible from a guy who looked like he both could and would crush him physically the moment he put a foot wrong or said something that might have been misinterpreted. It had only been after their mutual foray into the nightmare world, where they'd discovered that they shared both a fear and love of childhood toys that Ken had realized Kanji might be someone he'd really like to spend some time with. After that, it hadn't taken long for the two of them to start spending lots of time together, and Kanji had quite honestly been the person that Ken had looked forward to seeing most when Junpei had invited him to join the others on a Christmas trip to Inaba. After the confrontation in the Velvet Room, Ken had, on the advice of the rest of the SEES team, stayed pretty far away from Junes, but…he'd been kind of hoping that he might get the chance to see Kanji at least once before he left.

Kanji swiveled his head around to blink at Ken out of sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes. "Huh? Oh, Ken-kun…it's you. Hey." Straightening up in his chair, he cleared his throat, and put on his best, most manly voice, one that wasn't fooling Ken for a second. "Yeah, sure, I'm fine. Just, uh, you know, catching a break. Yeah." Frowning, he scratched his head contemplatively with one finger, then sighed. "Uh, look, about what happened the other day…it wasn't right, what Yosuke said to Minako. I mean, I'm not…really sure exactly what's going on here, but I know that was out of line, you know? So…sorry."

Ken nodded. "It's okay," he assured him. "You didn't say it." It wasn't actually okay, thought Ken. The things that Ken would like to do to Yosuke involved a lot of loud, angry comic-book sounds like "wham!" "Bang!" and "POW!" Ken decided it was probably best not to say that part out loud. Either way, it wasn't Kanji's fault. When Kanji got angry, people noticed. This time, Kanji had just been confused, which was sort of a typical thing. Anyway, he had nothing to do with this one, as far as Ken could see.

"Yeah," agreed Kanji, nodding, and looking a little relieved. "Right. Thanks."

Glancing around, Ken frowned. "Where's Naoto-san?" he asked. She and Kanji were very often together, although even Ken had noticed that their togetherness had a lot to do with Kanji following Naoto around like a sick puppy. Watching the way Kanji acted around her actually made Ken just a little bit uncomfortable, since he was aware, for the first time, of what he probably looked like when he found himself trailing after Minako. He was better about it now than he'd been before, back at Gekkoukan, but she still had this way of making him turn his head in the middle of a thought or a conversation, and now eh could picture the way his face probably looked just like Kanji's when he did it, which was…not a good thing, not at all.

"Naoto? Who knows?" Kanji looked up at Ken, and there was so much misery in his face that Ken forgot about being embarrassed. "Probably off with Yosuke, again…guess they've been together a lot, these last few days." He scowled.

"Ah," murmured Ken. This, he realized, was a very delicate situation, far more delicate than anything he'd wanted to get involved in. Still, now that he'd started it…what exactly would Junpei do, here? Whatever it was, thought Ken, it was probably the opposite of what he should do.

"You ever had a crush before, Ken?" asked Kanji, suddenly. "Like…on a girl?"

"Have I…wait, on a girl? What else would I have a crush on?" asked Ken, his eyes widening in surprise.

For some reason, both Kanji and Ken sat in silence for the next few moments, both of them flushing bright red.

"It's just,'" moaned Kanji, apparently unable to stop himself now that he'd started, "there's always somebody else. No matter what I try to do, there's always somebody else who does it better, or first…I mean, she's always got someone else to look at, you know?"

Ken, who had been forced to watch as the love of his life dated pretty much every single guy at Gekkoukan High, knew. He knew very, very well. "Kind of," he muttered.

There was clearly nothing else to be said, as far as Ken was concerned. The two boys sat opposite each other in mutually appreciative misery, sympathizing in brooding silence while the world went on around them.

"Whoa," said Junpei, walking out of the grocery department and up to Kanji and Ken's table. "What happened to you guys? You look beat…"

There was a moment, there, when Ken had the opportunity to say something. He probably, he knew, could and should have done something in that split second window to prevent Junpei from catching on.

Unfortunately, he wasn't fast enough.

"Ohhhh," murmured Junpei, nodding slowly and knowingly. "I get it…I know what's up here. Yeah, there's only one thing that can make a guy look the way you two do, like his whole world's just fallen apart…and that's a girl, right? You guys are having girl trouble? Good thing I showed up when I did! Hey, Junpei Iori, chick magnet is on the case!"

"Don't say 'on the case,'" grunted Kanji. "Sounds like something she'd say…"

Ken blinked at Kanji in surprise. Wow, thought Ken. Okay, this guy had it even worse than he'd originally thought…

"


	7. Carrying the Torch: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

"What about you?" asked Kanji, with just a hint of maliciousness in his voice. "You seen Rise lately?"

Junpei shrugged "Nah, I've been, you know, letting things chill out, kinda. I mean, stuff got weird between us when that all went down in the Velvet Room, so I figure I'll give her some time to figure out how much she misses me, right?"

Ken and Kanji exchanged a look.

"You're um…you're kind of an idiot, Junpei-san," muttered Kanji. "Why don't you just get her some flowers or something? Girls like flowers. I think. Uh…'cept Naoto, Naoto doesn't like flowers. She doesn't like…anything that other girls like, far as I know." He sighed.

Junpei looked as though he had decided not to have heard Kanji's remark about his intelligence. "Well, then, that's what we need to figure out," he informed them, sitting down backwards in one of the chairs, and folding his arms over the top of it, frowning in intense thought. "What does Naoto-kun really like? Cause, everybody likes gifts. Girls, all girls definitely like gifts, I know that's true."

"I try giving her stuff," insisted Kanji. "I do, I give her lots of stuff…it's just, she never likes it. She's all sweet about it, but…she never wears it. Like that hat I gave her, that one time, at Christmas…guess where I found it?"

"Where?" asked Ken, not sure he actually wanted to know.

"On Teddie," mumbled Kanji.

"Whoa, wait." Junpei looked genuinely surprised. "She…she re-gifted it? That's…that's bad, man. That's like, the shun to end all shuns…"

Kanji buried his face in his hands. "Like I don't know that," he croaked.

Junpei bit his lip. "So, Naoto doesn't like girly stuff…but you do like girly stuff. See, that's the problem right there, you're just not connecting. "

"Maybe we should ask Minako," suggested Ken. "She…usually has good ideas about this sort of thing."

Junpei and Kanji both instantly shook their heads at him. "No way" insisted Junpei. "No, this is a man's job, okay? No reason to get Mina-tan involved in this…that'd be pussying out!"

"Uh, probably not the best time to go to Minako for help, anyway," agreed Kanji." No offense, but…every time she gets involved in something, seems like she kinda makes it worse…"

Ken was offended, and he could see by the look on Junpei's face that Junpei wasn't going to stand for that sort of thing either. Kanji must have noticed as well, because he put both hands up in front of his face, and hastened to correct the error.

"No, hey, n-nothing like that," he stammered. "I just mean that, like, with all the shit that's gone down between her and the others, maybe now's not the best time to bring her into this, okay? That's all I meant, you don't gotta look so pissed off…"

In the back of his mind, Ken wondered who would win in a confrontation between Kanji and Junpei. Junpei was amazing with a persona, but probably couldn't punch nearly as hard or effectively as Kanji could. It would really all depend on the circumstances…and whose side was Ken supposed to take?

Luckily, he was saved from having to figure that out by the sudden and opportune arrival of Yu Narukami, who strolled up through the food court just as Junpei and Kanji were starting to square off.

"Hey guys," said Yu. "What's going on here? You look…a little tense." His voice was wary, and Ken saw that he was standing at the ready, legs slightly apart, as though preparing for some sort of action. The events of the past few days, Ken realized with a little inward sigh, had put a lot of people on edge, and Yu, the perfect leader, had probably gotten stuck in the middle of most of it. Not that Ken really cared. As far as he was concerned, Yu could have done a ton more to help Minako out, and for some reason, just…hadn't.

Suddenly, Kanji lost interest in Junpei, distracted by Yu's approach. "Hey," he said, turning to Ken, "this guy…this is the guy, the one guy who has all the answers. He's like…a romance king, or something, all the girls are crazy about him."

"What?" Now Yu looked slightly alarmed. "Kanji-kun, what are you talking about?"

"Senpai," begged Kanji, placing both hands together in a gesture of genuine supplication, "please, I'm begging ya. We need your help."

While Junpei sulked at the table, Kanji outlined the whole issue with Naoto to his team leader. The more Kanji explained, the more uncertain and uncomfortable Yu looked, until Ken wasn't sure if Kanji was actually making the problem worse by going to Yu for help.

"And this guy," finished Kanji, jerking a thumb in Junpei's direction, "He's hopeless. He and Rise have a thing, right, but he's not sure how to get her back on his side, so…"

"So?" asked Yu helplessly.

"So," insisted Kanji, "what are we supposed to do?"

Yu took a moment to think, apparently very hard, about that question. While he stood there, frowning, Kanji watched him as though at any moment, he was about to open up and deliver the pearl of wisdom that would make the world begin turning the right way up on its axis again.

"Kanji," muttered Yu eventually. "What you're asking me to do, essentially, is to keep Naoto away from Yosuke, right? And…Yosuke is pretty much my best friend. There's…a real conflict of interests, here. I'm not sure I can help you."

Kanji's face fell. He looked instantly crushed, as though his idol had just fallen.

"Sorry," mumbled Yu, obviously embarrassed. "It's…it's not that I don't think the two of you would make a good couple, it's just…"

"Nah, Yu's right," interjected Junpei. "Best friend's a best friend. Some lines, you just don't cross. I hate the guy's guts, but that doesn't change the code. Look man, I've got another idea. You're not gonna like it, but…hear me out."

Dejectedly, Kanji slumped back into the chair next to Junpei. "What is it?" he asked.

For some reason, Junpei turned and looked straight at Ken. Ken gulped. There was something about this that didn't' feel quite right…


	8. Carrying the Torch: Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

"Um, hey, Naoto-san," mumbled Ken.

Junpei had informed Ken that he'd probably find Naoto at the shrine, since Junpei himself had seen her there more than once over the past few days. Ken wasn't sure what she was praying for, but she looked awfully serious, even for Naoto, who typically wore a thoughtful, less than exuberant expression on her calculating face.

As Ken approached, Naoto turned around and smiled at him, gesturing for him to join her. "Ah, Ken-kun," she murmured. "I'm glad to see you…it has been a few days since we've had any contact. I was worried that you might be…disappointed in me."

"Disappointed?" asked Ken, surprised. "Um, no…why"

Naoto sighed. "I fear that I have been remiss in my behavior, ever since that unfortunate encounter in the Velvet Room. While I should have been spending my efforts on mending the bonds that have been broken between our leaders, I have instead felt…listless and distrait. It is a strange feeling. Perhaps I am coming down with an illness, of some kind."

"Um…I'm sorry," replied Ken, not sure what else to say. "I, uh, can come back another time, if you're not feeling well."

Naoto didn't appear to hear him. She was frowning at something just past his shoulder, although when Ken glanced over to see what she was looking at, there didn't seem to be anything there.

"Doesn't it seem strange to you," she asked, "that such tightly forged bonds are so easily broken? The things that we fought for, that we held so dear to us…they are damaged by such a little altercation in a single moment. It gives one pause…makes one wonder if it is worth one's while to create connections with people who are so changeable and easily swayed."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Naoto was talking about Yosuke. His violent reaction to Minako's relationship with Adachi had shocked all of them, even his own closest friends. Maybe she was talking about Minako, too, whose unexpected allegiance switch had startled all of them, even SEES…everyone, in fact, except for Junpei, apparently.

Still, Naoto seemed sad in a totally different, more personal way, and it made Ken feel sad, too, although he wasn't sure exactly why. Maybe it was the lost look in her eyes, or the fact that she was asking him, a fourteen year old kid with no relationship experience to speak of, for an opinion.

"I'm terribly sorry," said Naoto, clearing her throat. Her eyes refocused on Ken's and she looked a bit more alert than she had the moment before. "I am…speaking in enigmas, am I not? I am sure that you have had enough of that sort of nonsense, after the fallout of recent events. Well." She nodded, more to herself than to him. "That's that, then. What can I do for you, Ken-kun? Have you come to say goodbye? I was sad, indeed, to hear that you and the rest of your friends would be leaving for the island, soon. Much though it may seem otherwise, now, we have greatly enjoyed the time that you all have spent with us."

"I…have to go back to school," Ken reminded her, although he knew that wasn't what she meant.

"Of course," agreed Naoto.

There was a moment of laden silence, during which Ken suddenly felt small, as though he, much like Kanji the day before, was watching one of his idols slowly crumble to the ground. It was unpleasant, and it took him a moment to shake himself and to remember that he was here on a very specific mission, one that he'd been entrusted with, frankly against his will, by Kanji and Junpei.

"Um, Naoto-san," he began again, trying to sound like the confident Bro that he was apparently expected to become. "There's, uh, something I want to talk to you about."

"Certainly," agreed Naoto, nodding. "Anything you like."

"Right," muttered Ken. "Um…so…how do you, uh, feel about Kanji-san?"

Naoto's eyes widened in surprise. Ken thought, or perhaps wished that just for a moment, she looked a bit impressed. "Oh dear," she said. "Are we really going to talk about that?"

"W-well, not if you don't want to," stammered Ken quickly, resisting the urge to turn and bolt as fast as his legs would carry him. "It's just, that, uh, I think he kinda really likes you, and…so…um…I…"

That was it. It was all that Ken had in him. His words sputtered out and gave up on him, and he was left staring at Naoto helplessly. She gave him a kind, understanding sort of smile, and sighed.

"Is he under the impression," she asked, "that I am not aware of that fact?"

Ken had no response to that. He actually wasn't sure.

"It is a shame," continued Naoto philosophically, "but perhaps in this one respect, I am more feminine even than Rise-chan. It is typical of girls, is it not, to reject those that are kind to them, or those who would care for them, and to pursue, instead, the ones that are out of reach? That is, at least, what I have read about the stereotypes surrounding women. It seems unfortunately apt, in this circumstance."

"That…sounds about right," agreed Ken, thinking of Minako's choice to ignore him and pursue, instead, people who either went into comas or turned out to be serial killers.

"So," finished Naoto, "in answer to the question that you asked; no, I am sorry. I am unable to express any romantic feelings for Kanji-kun, much as I will always respect and care for him as a colleague. He, at least, understands the nature of loyalty…and for that I am grateful to him, but I have nothing else to offer."

"Um…okay." Ken nodded. That wasn't of course, the answer he'd hoped for, but it was honest, and at least this entire debacle was over.

"Forgive me for asking," said Naoto, "but…it does seem strange that Kanji-kun would put you up to this. He is…not usually the type to send a child to fight his battles."

"Wasn't Kanji," muttered Ken. "Junpei did it."

Naoto raised an eyebrow. "Aha….that seems more plausible. Spending his time meddling in the affairs of others, rather than working to right his own wrongs with Rise-chan, I see. Well, perhaps we shall meddle as well, in that case."

Reaching into her pocket, Naoto pulled out her cell phone. Dialing a few numbers, she held it up to her ear. "Rise-chan? Yes, I am…wait, what? No, please listen. There is a matter I would like to discuss with you, concerning Junpei Iori…"

Ken decided it was time for him to get out of there, fast. He ran for it.


	9. Carrying the Torch: Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

As Kanji stepped through the door to Marukyu Tofu, he overhead Rise finishing up a conversation on the phone.

"No, seriously?" she was saying, sounding incensed. "That's…I mean, come on, I figured that even he would do something like that himself…oh, wow, wait, hang on…no, no, I promise, I'll call you back. Trust me, I know exactly how to handle this."

She slammed her cell phone down on the counter, and spun around with a remarkably dazzling Risette original smile on her face. "Kanji-kun!" she said, beaming at him. "It's great to see you!"

Kanji swallowed nervously. Junpei, he knew, was crouching somewhere in the shadows, or the lack thereof, trying to see and hear what went on inside the tofu shop. Kanji had a job to do here, and as a good guy, he wasn't gonna let himself let Junpei down. This was a man's moment.

Drawing himself up to his full height, he gave Rise a forced smile that made his face feel a bit stretched and funny. "Uh, hey, Rise-chan," he mumbled. "Sure, nice to see you too, uh…what, you still working? You know, uh, bunch of those SEES guys are going back to Iwatodai pretty soon…do you know if Junpei's going with 'em?"

Rise frowned and haughtily tossed her hair. "No, I don't know. And I don't care. Why should I? It's not like he's paid any attention to me ever since that thing in the Velvet Room. I figured he'd at least call, but…nope, nothing. Not one little thing. So good riddance, really. He might as well just get lost, as far as I'm concerned."

Yikes, thought Kanji. That didn't sound good at all. "Aw, come on," he mumbled, thinking as fast as he could, which frankly wasn't very fast, and he knew it. "Uh, I'm sure that's not it…hey, give the guy a chance, he's probably just been, uh…busy. Yeah, really busy with all that SEES stuff. Right?"

"I told you," insisted Rise, "I don't care what he's busy with. I don't even want to talk about Junpei." She sighed heavily, and then suddenly turned on Kanji with the scariest look in her eyes that he had ever seen there. There was something almost…hot in the way she was looking at him, and the usually peppy glint in her eyes was now suddenly predatory.

"But Kanji," she cooed, sidling slowly closer to him as he stood stock still with growing panic. "Now that Junpei's out of the picture, I'm starting to realize that maybe I've been missing something important all along…and that's you, Kanji. You've always been there for me, and you're such a nice guy…so brave, and so manly…wow, I don't know why I never saw it before, but you're really much more my type than Junpei ever was."

Rise took two quick steps forward and placed both hands on Kanji's shoulders, staring into his eyes and fixing him to the spot with total terror. "Wh-wh-wha, uh, buh, wait…ah…" was all he managed to say, as Rise's twinkling eyes bored farther and farther into his fear-paralyzed soul.

Suddenly, there were pounding footsteps on the pavement outside, and the door to the tofu shop burst open as Junpei came barreling in, eyes blazing frantically as he shoved himself in between Kanji and Rise.l

"What the hell is going on here?" he shouted.

Kanji blinked at him. "What the hell are you asking me for? She's your girlfriend, so you figure it out!"

With that, Kanji moved himself as far across the room as he could, making sure that there was tons of space between him and Rise. Part of him wanted to cut and run for it, but the part of him that still felt obligated to Junpei for seeing him through this mess wouldn't let him leave. Instead, he stood there and watched while Junpei wrung his hands and did his best to get Rise to meet his eyes.

"Wait, seriously?" asked Junpei. "No, you're not…with Kanji? Really?"

Rise glared at him. "No, not really," she informed him. "I was just trying to get your attention."

Kanji wasn't sure if he should be relieved, disappointed, or pissed off. "That's…that's not cool, man," he mumbled, still trying to sort his way through those emotions.

Turning the glare on him, Rise snapped, "you stay out of this. Actually, you deserve everything you got, after sending poor Ken to proposition Naoto-kun for you. And you," she added, whirling around on Junpei again. "You did pretty much the exact same thing. That's why Kanji's here, isn't it? To ask me about you? What are you both, twelve? Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?"

"Please," begged Kanji miserably, inching farther and farther away. "Please, stop shouting…"

"Hey, Rise," began Junpei. "It's not like that. Look, I wanted to see you, I just-!"

"You're just a coward, is that it?" interrupted Rise, looking almost apoplectic, and standing on her tiptoes the way she did when she unconsciously knew that she needed more intimidating height. "You're both just cowards…and you call yourselves men."

"You know how much of a man I am," murmured Junpei, apparently going for the seductive approach. Kanji winced. Bad move, he thought.

Rise almost spat out the words as she took him by the arm and flung him towards the door. "Get out!" she shrieked. "Both of you, get out of here!"

Junpei gave up. Kanji was relieved. He didn't like the idea of giving this any more of a try. Together, they turned around and strode as quickly as they could out of the shop, hopefully without looking too much as though they were retreating.

"That…sucked," muttered Kanji, when they were far enough away from the shop to be really considered "out."

"Complete and total mission failure," agreed Junpei miserably. "Man…I feel like crap. Did she really have to call us cowards, like that? Wasn't all the screaming enough?"

"Hey, guys!" called Ken, hurrying up to them from the street. "I'm so glad I found you! Naoto-san juts called Rise-san, and I don't know what's happening, but…"

He stopped, mouth still hanging open, apparently seeing the dark looks on Kanji and Junpei's faces.

"Oh," said Ken. "Um. Too late?"

Junpei sighed. "Look," he said, passing one arm around Kanji's shoulders, and the other around Ken's. "If there's anything we've learned today, it's this."

"Call your girlfriend?" suggested Kanji helpfully. "Uh, before she goes insane?"

Junpei shook his head. "Nah, nothing like that. You don't get it. What we've learned today, men, is the most important, number one rule of the Bro Code."

Kanji waited. Judging by the look on Ken's expectant face, this was going to be a new one for him, too.

"Bros before hoes, man," muttered Junpei. "Bros before hoes."

**Fin. **


	10. Recovery

**Fourth Story: Recovery**

**Summary: **When Yosuke arrives to help Yu and Dojima pack for the return trip to Yu's parents' place, Dojima shares an unexpectedly paternal moment with that Hanamura kid. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Dojima, Yosuke

"One more time," instructed Dojima, as he, Yu, and Nanako stood upstairs in Yu's bedroom, surrounded by bundles of clothes, gadgets, and other things that Yu was trying to pack for the long train trip home.

Obediently, Nanako stepped on to the stuffed suitcase that they were in the process of packing. Then she glanced back at Dojima uncertainly.

"Go on," insisted Dojima. "You won't fall. We won't let you."

Nanako shrugged, grinned, and then began to jump up and down on the top of the suitcase, looking giddier and more gleeful every time she came down on the lid and bounced up again. Just as it began to look as though the suitcase might really and finally close, the doorbell rang downstairs, and Nanako, distracted by the sound, teetered and lost her balance.

"Eek!" she shrieked, plummeting towards the floor. Yu's arms were out in a moment, and he'd caught her and was lowering her safely back down to the ground before Dojima had even had a chance to register what was going on.

"Yay! You're my hero, Big Bro!" announced Nanako, wrapping her arms around him and giving him an enthusiastic hug. Yu smiled.

"Nope," he said. "You're my hero. Looks like we can latch the suitcase, now. Nice job, Nanako."

While the members of his immediate family congratulated each other on a job well packed, Dojima hurried downstairs to answer the door. When he pulled it open, Yosuke Hanamura was standing outside, looking fidgety and unsettled.

"Uh, hi, Dojima-san," said Yosuke, giving Dojima his little, mostly respectful nod. "Um, is Yu home? I know he's leaving tomorrow, so…I thought I'd come and say hi. Or, goodbye. Or both, I guess."

Dojima ushered him in, closing the door again behind him. "Yeah, he's upstairs with Nanako. They're just finishing up some packing."

"Oh, right," said Yosuke. "Do you guys need help?"

From upstairs, there came the suddenly ecstatic sound of Nanako, squealing "Wheeeeee!" for reasons that Dojima couldn't quite define. He only hoped she hadn't found something else even more exciting to jump off of, and temporarily noted to himself that encouraging her to jump on suitcases may not have been have good for his overall disciplinary regime.

"Nope," muttered Dojima."I…think we've got it all under control. You want some coffee, or something? Yu'll be down as soon as he's done."

Yosuke graciously accepted a mug, and Dojima poured some of his signature black coffee into it. "Sugar?" he asked.

Yosuke shook his head. "Nah," he mumbled. "No thanks."

They sat together at the kitchen table in silence, listening to the rustlings and rumblings of the packing procedure through the upstairs floorboards.

"Hey, um, Dojima-san," began Yosuke, frowning into his coffee mug. "This may be kind of a weird time to say it, but…thanks."

Dojima raised an eyebrow at him. "Huh? Thanks for what?"

Yosuke scratched the back of his neck with one finger, looking uncomfortable. Then again, thought Dojima, that kid had always looked uncomfortable around him. For the longest time, it had been suspicious. Now, after everything, Dojima sort of understood why. "Thanks for…you know, the way you handled all of this. Most people wouldn't have been so cool about it. I mean, I know this was probably horrible, and…and Nanako got involved, and you had to see some stuff that didn't make sense, and…there were lots of things you could have done, but…you didn't. Even when it got ugly, and I know it got really, really ugly, we got the job done, and you could have stopped us. Thanks for the trust, I guess, even if it wasn't really trust. Gah, I'm not making any sense…"

"Don't mention it," grumbled Dojima, not entirely sure that he deserved any thanks. Actually, whether Yosuke knew it or not, he'd tried more than once to "stop" them, or to get in the way. He just hadn't been very good at it. It hadn't worked.

"Oh, and when your shadow came out," continued Yosuke, his eyes lighting up a little with excitement as he spoke, "and Nanako was fighting, and then you were all like 'let me at him!' and ready to jump in there, even though you didn't have a persona…that was really badass. Seriously. It was awesome." Pausing for a moment, he apparently remembered who he was talking to, and swallowed nervously. "Um, sir," he added. Dojima almost laughed.

"Maybe I owe you some thanks, too," he admitted grudgingly. "For looking after Nanako…and Yu. You know, he talks about you a lot."

"Yeah," muttered Yosuke. "I bet. I mean…he's a great leader. He can probably think of a hundred things that I did wrong when I was trying to take over his shoes. Things that I could have done different, to make things go faster, or…"

In an instinctive response to the frustration in Yosuke's voice, Dojima reached out and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder, the same gesture he often used with Yu to indicate manly solidarity. Yosuke looked surprised.

"That's not what I'm talking about," insisted Dojima. "Look, you two are supposed to be 'partners,' right?"

"Uh, yeah," mumbled Yosuke.

Dojima shrugged. "Partners look out for each other. That's what they're for. So, you got that part right, at least. That's the important part. The rest's just…extras." He released Yosuke's shoulder, and nodded. "You're doing fine, kid."

"Well…if you say so. I guess that's something." Yosuke sounded slightly stunned.

Standing up from the table, Dojima cleared away his coffee mug, and glanced at the stairwell. There weren't any more gleeful noises echoing from upstairs, and that made him a little bit uneasy. It was probably time, he decided, to go and check out what was going on with the packing.

"I'll go see what's keeping Yu," he said, and started for the stairs.

"Um, Dojima-san, sir," called Yosuke, just as Dojima was about to start up for Yu's bedroom. Dojima turned around and raised an eyebrow at him. "Can I…can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, sure," said Dojima. "What?"

Yosuke looked up and really met Dojima's eyes for the first time. The seriousness in Yosuke's face took Dojima aback for a moment. No kid, he thought, should have that kind of look on his face. Kids were supposed to be about messing around. When did Yu, Yosuke, or any of the others get to really be kids? It was a sobering thought.

"How do you do it?" asked Yosuke. "You know, how do you go upstairs and pack up stuff, and go to work, and take your daughter to school, and act like the world's a normal place? I mean…no offense, but you just learned about the existence of another world…and that your dead partner's not really dead…and that your daughter's a magical whatever, and…so? Where do you start getting back to the real stuff?"

Dojima stopped, and frowned for a minute He had to think about that one, but found that the answer came from a different part of his brain than he thought it would. It came from the detective part, the part that was used to facing horrible things that made a father wish he hadn't raised a daughter in this world, and the part that somehow moved on from them, again and again, every time.

"There's nothing, really, that you do," he said, shrugging. "It's not a thing; it's not something that happens. I see the same thing after every case…people wandering around, trying to figure out what's next. What's next is easy. What's next is that you get up and you move on. The road to recovery starts with waking up in the morning, it's…it's just like that. Sorry. Wish I had something a little more profound, but I don't. Maybe you should ask Yu, he's good at that sort of thing."

As he climbed the stairs, and opened the door to Yu's room, Dojima thought he heard Yosuke mumbling something to himself in the kitchen, juts loud enough that the words almost came through.

"No," Yosuke was saying. "No, that's…that's pretty good. Thanks."

**Fin. **


	11. The More Things Change

**Fifth Story: The More Things Change**

**Summary: ** Dojima is drunk again. Adachi isn't. They remember what that used to be like. One shot.

**Character Focus: **Dojima, Adachi

After putting Yu on the train and waving goodbye, Dojima went to work. He finished the paperwork, barked a few orders, and even handled a patrol on his own. Arisato hadn't been to the station since the confrontation in the Velvet Room, and although Dojima had started out thinking that it was for the best, the number of phone calls and menial tasks that he had to manage had made him realize that it might be worth giving her a call, if only for the sake of getting more stuff done. He didn't have to forgive her. He didn't even have to talk to her, as far as he could see. He really, however needed someone who could make coffee and answer phones at the same time.

There had been a time when he'd used Adachi for that sort of thing. Then, it had been Arisato. Now they were both playing hookie, and for all Dojima knew, they were probably both hanging out and messing around together in the Velvet Room.

It was probably that irritated thought that set him off down the darkened streets of the shopping district that night. Well, maybe it was that thought, as well as the impressive quantity of sake he'd started drinking almost immediately after Nanako went to bed. The drinking had started out as his own little "fuck you" to the world at large and his busy, hectic day, and had ended up seeming like more and more of a good idea the farther he got into the bottle.

He was, therefore, wobbling slightly on his feet and uncomfortably dizzy as he strode directly through the Velvet Room door, and came face to face with a slightly alarmed looking Tohru Adachi.

"Whoa," said Adachi. "Uh. Hi there."

"Where's Arisato?" demanded Dojima, unsteadily.

"Probably asleep," suggested Adachi. "In her bed. Which is in her house. See, I know that, because I-!"

"She's not with you?" asked Dojima. "I thought she'd be with you."

Adachi grimaced. "Look, I haven't seen her in a while, okay? You wanna rub that in my face, go ahead, I don't give a shit. It's my fault, anyway."

Dojima blinked. "So…she's not here?" he clarified. "Damn…" For some reason, his own words were reverberating around in his head, and they sounded strange, as though they were all blending and slurring together.

Adachi let out an exasperated sigh. "Dojima-san…it's after eleven o'clock at night, and you're obviously sloshed, so…why don't you just go home, huh? You can go another round with me in the morning, if you really feel like it. I'll be here. I'm…always here."

Dojima glowered at him. "Don't you tell me what to do," he mumbled threateningly. "I'm in charge here, remember? Besides, you're supposed to be…to be dead." Suddenly, Dojima didn't feel so well. Something in his stomach was moving around unpleasantly, and he clutched at it, screwing up his eyes as he tried to fight down a wave of nausea.

"Oh, shit…" muttered Adachi, starting to look panicked. "Come on, don't…don't puke on the floor, I have to live here, remember? Come on, please?" Turning around, he gave Igor a beseeching look. Oh, thought Dojima. Until that moment, he hadn't even noticed that Igor was in the room.

"Hey, Igor, come on, look at this sad sack of shit. He's gonna make a mess all over your nice, blue…uh, everything. I gotta take this guy home."

Igor didn't even look up at him. It was as though Adachi hadn't said anything. Dojima snorted in amusement. If only he'd ever learned how to ignore Adachi properly…

"Hey, I'm talking to you!" insisted Adachi, annoyed. "Are you listening? You gonna let me out of here, or what? It's not like he's going anywhere on his own, unless you want him passing out on the floor and sleeping it off."

Again, Igor said nothing. Only a flicker of one eye indicated to Dojima that he was even aware that Adachi had spoken.

Adachi breathed out a long, frustrated sigh. Glancing at Dojima to see if he was listening, he sucked in a breath, bit his lip, and then looked Igor square in the eye.

"Master," he drawled miserably. "May I please, for the love of god, take this piece of shit detective out of here?"

This time, Igor did look up, and nodded once.

As Adachi walked over and grabbed Dojima roughly under one arm, Dojima snorted out a laugh.

"Master?" he asked.

Adachi gave him a murderous look. "You shut the fuck up," he muttered.

As they stalked back through the Inaba streets, Adachi hauling none too gently on Dojima's arm, Adachi kept mumbling angrily under his breath.

"Why are you so drunk, anyway?" he asked. "It's embarrassing. Don't you have a kid to look after? Seriously, and it's not like I care, but I don't see you winning the 'father of the year' award any time soon."

"You," Dojima informed him, stabbing one unsteady finger a little bit too close to Adachi's face, "have got no right to lecture me on…on conduct."

For some reason, that made Adachi laugh. "Yeah, fair point," he said, shrugging. "Got me there."

"You wanna know why I'm drunk?" asked Dojima.

Adachi shook his head. "Nah, not really. Not really at all. It was…sort of a rhetorical question."

"Good," finished Dojima miserably. "Cause I'm gonna tell ya…" He had to stop for a moment, while his stomach made dangerous, threatening lurching motions. When it finally calmed down, he took a second to figure out where he'd lost track of the conversation. "Right," he said finally. "You know something? Yesterday,…uh, yeah, yesterday I told that Hanamura kid something."

"Really," sighed Adachi. "And…that's why you're drunk?"

"I told him," continued Dojima, forging on despite and through Adachi's sarcasm, "some shit about how 'the first step to recovery is just getting up in the damn morning.' That's what I told him."

"Pithy," remarked Adachi.

Dojima shook his head violently, then immediately wished he hadn't as the dizziness threatened to overwhelm and down him. "But the funny part, "he finished, "is that I don't even know what the hell that means! 'Get up in the morning…recovery…' Shit. Do I look like the kinda guy you wanna ask for advice like that? Why don't these kids…just leave me alone?" He hiccupped, then shuddered. "I feel like shit," he said, in case that wasn't clear.

They were close to something that looked almost like his house by this point, although Dojima was sure that his house was a lot less blurry and wobbly than whatever this thing was. Adachi dumped him in a heap outside of something that looked like it might be a front door, and Dojima lay there on the ground for a moment, waiting patiently for the world to stop spinning and retake some semblance of sanity again.

"What it means," said Adachi, "is that life goes on, so get over it. Okay? That's what you told the kid. Not bad advice. You just made it sound prettier."

"Oh," mumbled Dojima. "Well, good. That's….at least that makes sense."

There was a moment of silence while Dojima lay on his back on the ground, and Adachi stood beside him, frowning as the real world night air chilled them both.

"The hell happened to my life?" asked Dojima peevishly.

Adachi shook his head. "Nothing, apparently. I mean, hey, this is pretty much just like old times, right? What's that thing old people say? 'The more things change, the more they stay the same?' Yeah, I think that's the one."

Forcing himself laboriously on to his hands and knees, Dojima gave himself the extra moment to stagger to his feet. He turned to Adachi, and was relieved to find that there seemed, at least, to be only one of Adachi this time. One was more than enough. Zero would have been better. Still, at least things were moving around less in his visual field.

"Why'd you come out here?" he demanded.

"What? Seriously? Any excuse to get out of that damn room," Adachi informed him. "Don't kid yourself and think I'm doing you any favors."

"Yeah," grumbled Dojima. "Not like you ever did…"

"Uh huh," agreed Adachi. Stepping forward, he reached for the doorknob and found, upon turning it, that the door was already open. "You know what though?" he asked, as Dojima struggled to join him at the door. "You're gonna do me one. I need to use your TV."

**Fin. **


	12. The Moon is Beautiful: Chapter One

**Sixth Story: The Moon is Beautiful, Isn't It?**

**Summary: **In the wake of Adachi's ultimatum, Minako tries to narrow down a concrete definition of a complicated word. Luckily for her, there's love everywhere she looks.

**Character Focus: **Minako, Yukari, Rise, Junpei, Chidori, Saki

**Chapter One**

"I think that's everything!" announced Yukari triumphantly, as she and Minako slammed down together on the trunk of her car. "Phew! Thanks, Mina-chan! Man, sometimes I forget how hard it can be when Kippei's not around. He helped me get everything packed in the first place…don't let Junpei know I said that, though. He'd never let me live it down if he heard that I'd admitted to something being 'man's work.'"

Minako smiled. "My lips are sealed," she promised. "You know, though, you could have asked Junpei to come and help out. I don't think he would have said no."

Yukari rolled her eyes. "No way," she insisted. "I'd rather grunt and sweat a little than have him see me struggling. Anyway, this is just you and me time, right? Girl time. When do we ever get any of that, anymore? Nah, Stupei can wait."

Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned back against the newly closed trunk, and gave Minako a look, searching look.

"What?" asked Minako, feeling a little uneasy under her old friend's skeptical stare.

"Are you really gonna be okay, here?" asked Yukari. "I mean…look, you don't have to do this. I know you think that it's all your fault, and so you have to handl it, but…it's not. You saved that guy's life, okay? I don't want you just sitting around feeling like a martyr while everybody dumps their guilt on you, that's not right. If you want, Minako, I can stay. Kippei'll understand, he gets that you're important to me."

For a moment, Minako almost said yes. She wanted to ask Yukari to stay, to please stay forever, because even with Junpei, she could always use another ally. She missed the girl time, and she missed having someone who really understood her on a different level, on a feminine level that she never had to explain.

In the end, though, she just shook her head. "Its okay, Yukari," she insisted. "Thank you, I mean it…and I want you to come back and visit, I want to see more of you, but you have a life to go back to, and people who love you. I can't just take up all of your time because I've screwed up and now I need someone to bail me out."

Yukari sighed. "When are you gonna start getting it, huh? You're not taking up my time…you have people who love you, too. Look, I want to see you happy. I don't think I've ever really seen that."

"Sure you have," insisted Minako. "I'm always happy, I'm-!"

"No, you're not," interrupted Yukari seriously. "I'm not talking about happy for a few minutes, like when you and I used to go watch Akihiko-senpai's boxing matches, or like when you and Fuuka would finish cooking something and for once it wouldn't burn. Not that kind of happy, not little happy. I'm talking about big happy, real happy, happy like…" She floundered for a moment, obviously frustrated, and waved her hands around in the air as though trying to make a point with her gestures that she hadn't gotten out yet in words. "You know what I mean," she managed finally, sighing in defeat.

Minako frowned. "I'm…not sure I do," she murmured. "There aren't…different kinds of happy, are there? Isn't happiness just…happiness? It's not such a complicated thing. That's part of its charm."

Yukari planted her hands on her hips. "Now you know that' snot true," she admonished. "I've heard you say it a hundred times, how you did all the stuff that you did back at Gekkoukan because you wanted us to be happy. Would you have sacrificed yourself to Nyx so that Fuuka could finish a cake, or someone could get a Christmas present they wanted?"

Minako opened her mouth to respond, but Yukari suddenly put up a hand in to stop her.

"You know what," said Yukari quickly, "don't answer that. I mean, it's you we're talking about, so as far all I know, you'd say yes. What I'm really trying to say is that I want you to have something to look forward to, you know? Something that makes you want to get up in the morning, or makes you feel better when you start to think about it. That's what Kippei wants for me, that's why I'd know he'd let me stay, because he knows I'd feel better about watching you feel better. Hey, does that make any sense? I'm just worried that staying here will end up making you miserable."

Minako took a moment to think about that. Of course what Yukari said made sense, but there was something else that she'd mentioned which hadn't sat right with Minako, something that was starting to crawl its way through her consciousness and make her uncomfortable.

"Is that what love means?" she asked finally. "Wanting someone else to be happy? Just like Kippei does for you?"

Yukari nodded enthusiastically. "Of course, you silly," she said. "And just like I do for you, okay? We love you, Minako…you do get that, right?"

Minako nodded, as though she did, and Yukari wrapped her up in a quick, friendly squeeze. Even as the feelings of gratitude and safety washed over her in Yukari's embrace, however, Minako found her mind straying to other things.

Did Tohru, she wondered, want her to be happy? Sometimes, she had a hard time telling for sure. So much of everything seemed to be about him, what he needed, and what he wanted. Maybe there was something in that, or at least in the fact that she hadn't even thought about it too much, up until he'd ordered her out and not to come back until she could give him what he needed. She'd spent so much time thinking about him and what she could do for him that she'd never noticed that maybe he didn't treat her the way she might have wished he did.

"Oh, hey!" announced Yukari brightly."Looks like we still have time to go grab something to eat before I have to leave. Do you want to do that?" Frowning suddenly, she sighed. "And if you really want, we can ask Stupei to come, too. I guess it's nice to see him, too, sometimes…"


	13. The Moon is Beautiful: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

The next morning, Minako was getting breakfast at the Junes food court when she saw Rise, sitting alone at the one of the tables, humming to herself as she sipped a cup of coffee.

Minako took a deep breath as she began walking over in Rise's direction. Now, she thought, would be as good or as bad a time as ever, and this conversation couldn't be avoided forever. Eventually, she'd have to face it.

"Rise," she murmured, hovering behind the chair just across from the woman she hoped was still her friend. "I'm sorry to bother you like this, but…I'd like to apologize for what happened in the Velvet Room the other day."

Rise raised an eyebrow at her. "What?" she asked, so sweetly that Minako instantly distrusted it. "You mean, about you making out with the guy that murdered our senpai?"

Minako bristled a bit, but now that she'd begun, she couldn't just walk away again. "No, actually," she murmured, as deferentially as she could manage. "Actually, I meant about what happened with Junpei. It's my fault that he treated you that way…he was distracted because I was upset. I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with the way he feels about you, and I wish I hadn't gotten in the way like that." She shrugged. "That's all."

Minako turned away again, prepared to walk off quickly and leave Rise alone with any thoughts or snide comments she might be inclined to make.

"Forget it," Rise muttered, with an almost childish peevishness in her voice. "It's…not like it wasn't going to happen anyway. Maybe it is sort of your fault, but…it's not like you did it on purpose. Maybe you're just one of those girls…"

"One of those girls?" asked Minako, turning around in some surprise. "One of…what girls? What does that mean?"

Rise rolled her eyes. "Come on," she remonstrated, "don't act like you don't know."

Minako, who seemed to be expected to know a lot of things lately that she clearly didn't, was starting to get a bit annoyed. Rise must have seen that in her face, because the teen idol's eyes suddenly widened.

"Wow, you really don't, huh?" asked Rise. "You're…you're actually kind of dense, you know that, Mina-chan? I mean…first it was Yosuke, and you acted like you just didn't have a clue about that, and now…"

"Junpei isn't interested in me, if that's what you mean," established Minako, very carefully, trying not to let herself get angry. "I know that you've always been worried about it, but really, Rise, you could have trusted me or at least trusted him when he told you-!"

"Not interested in you? Are you kidding?" Rise laughed, and it was a strange cross between a mocking laugh and a miserable, incredulous laugh at the same time. "You're the most interesting thing in his entire world. Okay, yeah, I know, maybe he's not in love with you, and maybe he's not even attracted to you, but if you think for one minute that there's room for me in between the two of you, then you're kidding yourself. It doesn't matter what I do…and at this point, I don't think it even matters what you do. He'd drop anything or anyone one for you in a second if he thought you needed him. He'd drop me. I mean…I guess he sort of did."

Minako blinked, trying to think of how to react to that. "No, listen," she insisted, "it's…it's not like that. I can see why you'd think that, and I'm sorry that I've made you feel that way, but Junpei and I are just good friends. We've been through a lot together, things that…things that it's hard to go through and get over alone. That's all it is."

"You say that like it's not a big deal," murmured Rise. She sighed, shaking her head, and her pigtails bouncing. "Minako, I'm not upset with you. Okay, maybe that's not true, maybe I'm a little angry about what you did to Yosuke, but… feelings happen. I know that. And I'm not angry about Junpei. I told you, it's not really your fault."

"But, you just said-!" interjected Minako.

Rise cut her off impatiently. "Hey, I'm not finished! Listen, you can't love everybody. I've got a big heart, and I know it, but even for me there isn't enough to reach everybody in the whole world. Maybe that's why I struggled when I first became an idol. It's stressful, trying to give everything you have to everybody who wants it. Junpei's already giving it all to you. There's not enough left for me. That's…that's just how it is."

"He doesn't love me," Minako reminded her. "You admitted that yourself."

Rise shook her head. "I said that he's not in love with you, that's not the same thing. Minako, there are lots of different kinds of love. Junpei's an all or nothing kind of guy, he's going all the way or he's going home, I guess. He loves you so much that it's hard for him to see other people. I know you're not doing it on purpose, but there it is."

Minako wanted to tell Rise to stop talking. She wanted to insist, to beg her to believe that there was nothing between her and Junpei that could possibly take the place of what Rise could be, or what Chidori had been. The more she thought about it, however, the more she remembered moments, like the way Junpei had said there wasn't anything here for him if she left, and the way he'd promised her that watching her die had been the worst moment of his life.

"How do I fix it?" she asked, feeling stupid and helpless.

Rise took a sip of her coffee. "You can't," she informed her. "Besides, why would you want to? Don't you want to be loved?"

Of course she did, thought Minako, but…at the same time, this wasn't right. "I don't want to come in between him and the rest of his life," she insisted. "I don't want to get in the way of his relationships."

"Then maybe hooking up with Adachi wasn't such a great idea," sighed Rise. "I mean, it's obvious. If he has to pick a side, then he's going to choose yours. No matter what's at stake, he's on your team. That's loyalty for you, and loyalty and love come from the same place, I guess. They're both all about being willing to give up everything you have for the sake of somebody else."

"Have you ever felt that way about someone?" asked Minako.

Unexpectedly, Rise smiled. "Mmmhmm,' she murmured. "My friends and I have been through a lot together, too, so…I guess maybe I can't blame Junpei. Maybe, in the end, he's not wrong."


	14. The Moon is Beautiful: Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

"Hey, Junpei," said Minako, as she stood browsing the armors at Daidara's store. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you."

Junpei looked up from the register, where he'd either been lost in thought, or dozing off. "Yeah? What's up?"

"Well…" For a moment, Minako wondered if she should, perhaps, have led in to this a bit more casually, but past experiences with Junpei had proven that really, it was usually best to just come right out and say it. "Have you spoken to Rise, lately?"

Junpei scowled irritably at her. "Aw, man, Mina-tan…not you, too!"

Minako blinked. "Me too? Other people have been asking you?"

"Sure," muttered Junpei . "Like, pretty much everybody. Seems like me and Rise are everybody's favorite soap opera, these days. Not like it can be that interesting to watch, I mean, we don't do much, or throw things or have big public fights, but, still…" He shook his head. "Ugh, girls. Can't live with 'em…"

"Aren't I a girl?" asked Minako.

Junpei apparently had to actually think about that for a moment. "Yeah, of course you're a girl, but you're, uh…you know, you. So it's different."

Minako wasn't entirely sure what was "different" about it, but instinct encouraged her not to ask. That might be a can of worms, she decided, that wasn't worth opening. Instead, she insisted, "So? Have you spoken to her or not?"

Junpei sighed, defeated. "Nope," he admitted. "Not…not exactly. There was that one time…"

Junpei went on to briefly and somewhat uncomfortably describe a recent encounter with Rise, during which she'd apparently attempted to hit on Kanji, and had then shouted at Junpei for not calling. Minako was forced to admit to herself that she had no idea what that was all about, although in the end it did seem to come down to the fact that Rise wasn't too happy with Junpei's conduct. Thinking back to what Rise had told her about Junpei's loyalties getting in the way of their relationship, Minako felt guilty and frustrated, and couldn't help but feel as though some of this really was, in an indirect and accidental way, mostly her damn fault.

"It's like I said," Junpei was saying, apparently oblivious to Minako's reverie. "Girls…they're crazy. I mean, one minute they're pissed at you for not calling, the next they're hitting on some guy right in front of you to try and make a point…and what the hell point is that supposed to make, anyway? See, that I don't get. It's the head games. Why's it always gotta be headgames? Chidori didn't do shit like that. She was real, you know? She was straight with me. It made sense. This…this is trouble. This girl is trouble."

Minako felt that he wasn't being entirely fair to Rise, especially considering what Minako remembered about Junpei's history with the Strega member in question. "Junpei," she reminded him, "Chidori did nothing but play head games. She tricked you into being trapped and unable to join your team members during a significant full moon battle…and that was the just the start of it. She was…she was…"

She wanted to say "she was a headcase," or "she had more mental problems that the rest of us put together," which considering what had happened over the course of that year was quite an impressive statement. In the end, though, Minako couldn't bring herself to put Chidori down. She hadn't been very fond of the girl, and although Minako was well aware that she really did owe Junpei's life to Chidori, Chidori's shifting allegiances and standoffish manner had never touched her as the sort of thing she really wanted for her closest friend.

"Chidori didn't want anything from me," Junpei went on, apparently taking a trip down the darker alleys of memory lane. "You know, she was just…there, I guess. Nah, that's not what I mean, but she and I, we could just be and that was it. She didn't need nothing. She just didn't want to be alone. It was easy, it made sense, it was…comfortable. Made me feel good, inside, without having to worry so much about the other shit like flowers and phone calls, and…needing. One of the things I liked about her, she always made me want to give, never had to ask for it. Rise….she's just a bundle of complaints, half the time." He grumbled something to himself, bit his lip, and glared accusingly at a sword that was hanging just across from him on the wall near the door.

"She cares about you," insisted Minako, unwilling to give this one up, even in the face of Junpei's obvious resentment. Maybe, she thought, maybe if she could just bring him around, she'd be able to set this whole thing right again, this whole thing she'd had apparently been the cause of damaging in the first place.

Junpei shook his head. "She sure cares about something," he said, "but I dunno what it is. See, caring's supposed to be easy, something that happens when it's quiet, I guess. It's not all of this noise and crap. You care about somebody by caring about them, not by telling everybody else how much they don't care about you." He sighed. "But, then again, that's probably a girl thing, and I will never, not ever understand the girl stuff. Not gonna try, don't wanna know. Girls are just…ugh. You know what I'm saying?"

"I'm still a girl," Minako reminded him.

Junpei glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Kay," he said, "then you tell me what it's all about. What am I supposed to do to make her stop freaking out? Is there a thing, like, that I can do to make this all go away?"

"Try calling her," suggested Minako.

"You're a like goddamn broken record," muttered Junpei. "Hey, here's a thought…how come she can't call me, huh? Where's the rule that says a girl can't call a guy first?"

That almost made Minako smile. "Aren't you the one who always says that this kind of thing is a man's job? That he's the one who needs to take the initiative?"

Junpei bit his lip. "Got me there," he mumbled. "Fine, I'll call. But don't you leave…you stay right there in case I need backup."

Minako, dutifully, did not move.


	15. The Moon is Beautiful: Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

One morning, Minako woke up fully intending to go to the police station. It had been days since she'd stopped reporting in for work, and the lack of angry phone calls from Dojima was only making her feel worse and worse about playing hookie. Today, she decided, would be the day. She'd walk right back in, sit down at her desk, and then…

That was, of course, where the plan fell apart. What was she supposed to do after that? Would she apologize for just not coming in for almost a week? How would she apologize for the rest of what had happened, for lying to Dojima and for Adachi's sudden reappearance? Was there, actually, anything worth saying on the subject? Somehow, no apology she could make seemed quite sufficient for the circumstances.

It was with those unpleasant thoughts in her head that Minako found herself lingering, yet again, around the Junes food court, loathe to get on the bus and take the long, nerve-wracking ride to the station where she would have no idea what exactly was waiting for her, or if they'd even kept her position open for her after so many missed mornings. She shuddered involuntarily at the idea of what Dojima would be like, with no one to make sure that he had a constant supply of coffee to fend off his general distaste for the concept of mornings in general.

As she idly and somewhat pathetically stood in the food court and watched the people passing by, Minako wondered what it had been that had forced her out of bed that morning with the resolve that today, she was going to change things. That of course, had been ridiculous. What was so different about today? Nothing. It was the same mess she'd been in for days, and the deeper she found herself mired in the mess, the more of a struggle it became to even want to get out of bed, especially with no end or solution in even the farthest and most optimistic of sights.

Perversely, something that Yosuke had once said to her chose that moment to wend its way back through her mind. They'd been sitting right here, in the food court, watching the people, and Yosuke had gotten this sort of wistful, faraway look in his eyes, thinking about someone who had been gone for a long time. "I don't know why I'm still here," he'd mused. "Maybe it's because I used to look forward to it so much when she was around. The feeling kinda sticks with you, you know?"

She didn't know why she'd thought about Yosuke, the one person she was trying the hardest not to think about. There was a little stab of internal guilt, shame, and anger at the same time as she remembered the way he'd looked at her and the horrible things he'd said in the Velvet Room. He'd meant those things, she knew, even if the others tried to insist that he'd spoken in haste and temper. He'd been missing Saki then, too, and that was what had made him so furious. Saki was the same girl that had made him want to get up in the morning, and even though she was gone forever there was something about her memory that was so precious to him he couldn't let it be tampered or tarnished, not by anyone. Adachi's very existence tarnished it. His relationship with Minako…did something sickeningly, horribly worse, that maybe there was no word for.

"But it wasn't love," mumbled Minako to herself, almost defiantly. "She didn't love him. She despised him. That's worse than not loving someone."

Minako had been witness to an argument once between Rise and Yukiko, during which Yukiko had insisted that love meant something mutual, and that no one could really be in love with someone who didn't love them in return. Rise had begged to differ, rather hotly. She'd said that unrequited love was one of the most beautiful forms of love, and something about their being lots of really great songs about it. The argument, which had been groundless to begin with had drifted off into the place where all idle and insignificant chatter goes after too many minutes in the sun, but it had left Minako with a strange and uncertain taste in her mouth.

Saki had never loved Yosuke, but there was little question that she'd meant the world to him, even after he'd known the truth. That had to be love, if anything was.

Minako knew, of course, that she'd been very popular in high school. She tried not to think too hard about it, because it was a little embarrassing and somewhat nonsensical, especially the way Junpei always described it.

He'd say things to anyone who'd listen, like "Mina-tan's every guy's dream girl. Even the ones she never dated, they'd follow her around with those big, stupid puppy-dog eyes…I kinda felt bad for 'em, hah." Then he'd grin at everyone as though what he'd just said was funny, but over the years it had managed to make Minako sad.

It wasn't just that he apparently thought of her as some kind of floozy, which she sincerely hoped she wasn't, and yet suspected she might actually be. It was the also the idea that she'd managed to make all the people in Junpei's extravagant stories feel something that she hadn't been able to feel in return. Looking at what had become of Yosuke after Saki, Minako could only imagine the way a love that went totally unnoticed must feel inside a person trying to get through his or her day. Of course, there was also Ken, whom Minako had initially dismissed as a sweet little kid with a childish crush, but who apparently managed to harbor that crush even today. That must, she knew, mean something.

It meant something like love, something that she'd thought she'd understood until she'd seen the longing, listless look in Yosuke's eyes when he talked about the girl who never cared for him, or when she'd seen the set, grim lines of Tohru's mouth as he'd told her that he needed her to tell him that she was in love with him, and that nothing else would be enough.

That of course, begged another question, a question that she knew she needed an answer to.

Was she?

**Fin. **


	16. For a Friend

**Seventh Story: For a Friend**

**Summary: **Nanako confronts Adachi in the Velvet Room to impart a pearl of wisdom that Adachi isn't keen on hearing. One shot. Inspired by conversations with **der kapitan. **

**Character Focus: **Adachi, Dojima, Nanako

As usual, Adachi was bored. Sitting in the Velvet Room, doing absolutely nothing and with no far-reaching goals even to dream about, he was always bored, but today, it was worse than usual. He was so bored and listless that it had opened up all of the restless space in his unoccupied mind, and all he could think about was her.

At first, after he'd told her not to come back until she could give him what he wanted, he'd felt empowered. For months, he'd been watching himself losing control, feeling the way that every sight of her or contact with her turned him into sickeningly malleable jelly that wanted nothing more than to be loved. There had been a real rush when he'd turned the tables on her…but there had been pain, too, unexpectedly real, unpalatable pain that had made him want to take it back and grab her quick before she had a chance to walk out of the Velvet Room and out of the life that she'd almost forced him to start living.

Slowly, as the days went by, it had gotten worse. He'd been sure, at the start, that he'd done the right thing, that he'd made the decision that was best for him. Maybe it wasn't a hero's decision, maybe it had shocked the hell out of her, but in the end, it would make her realize how much she needed him, and not just the other way around.

It was only after the first week had gone by that Adachi had begun to realize, with that sinking, self-loathing in the pit of his stomach that maybe she wasn't coming back. Maybe he'd demanded something from her that she didn't have to give, and that he couldn't live without. Now, that was all he could think about, and every wasted second of every miserable, monotonous piece-of-shit day was just more evidence of the fact that probably, if he'd just stayed quiet and decided to take what he could get, he could have been with her. In a moment where she'd had a decision to make, he'd let her go, and maybe she'd taken it and walked out forever. He had to admit to himself that if she had, she'd been smart. There sure as hell wasn't any future in sticking around with him, and they both knew it.

The clock on the wall made miserable, taunting tick-tock noises as Adachi tried not to stare at it. Actually, he wasn't sure what a clock was doing there in the first place, or when it appeared. No one had installed it. One day, he'd just looked up and it had been there. Igor had said that the Velvet Room was just a manifestation of what was going on inside some poor sucker's head. Maybe that clock came from his head. He was the sucker. It was counting down the seconds that he was trying not to think about.

"Adachi-san!" called a gratingly cheerful little voice. He looked up and blinked at Nanako, who was wandering in through the street entrance, looking chipper and upbeat, and generally all of the things that Adachi wasn't and hated at this moment. "Hi!'

"Hey," muttered Adachi, taking out the persona compendium and slumping into his chair with a long-suffering look on his face. "What do you want today?"

Nanako frowned at him. "That's not very nice," she admonished him. "You should try to be nicer...it would make people like you more."

The statement was so blatantly ridiculous that Adachi snorted on a laugh. "Yeah, that's…that's probably not gonna happen," he informed her. "Come on, what's it gonna be? Let's go, I don't have all day."

He did, of course, have all day. In fact, as far as he knew, he had the rest of eternity, but Nanako was pissing him off. She was too happy. What the fuck was there to be so happy about?

"Um…nothing," said Nanako.

Adachi raised an eyebrow at her. "Nothing? Seriously? What'd you come in here for?"

Suddenly, Nanako frowned, and looked down at her shiny new Christmas shoes. Black, noted Adachi, with the detached, detective part of his brain. They had little flowers on them. He'd only seen her wear them once before.

"Actually…" mumbled Nanako, shuffling her feet uncomfortably. "Um, have you seen Dad? I can't find him anywhere…he's not at the station, and he's not at the house, and…uh…"

Oh, thought Adachi. Figures. Dojima was pretty damn lucky, he decided, to have a kid who actually cared enough to go chasing around after him. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around? Not that Adachi would know much about that, but all those TV shows with the big happy families on them always painted it like the kid was supposed to be running off, and the parents were supposed to be scolding the kid. It made sense, sort of.

Adachi shrugged. "Sorry, can't help you," he said. "I've seen him a few times, though. Came in yesterday, drunk off his ass."

Nanako wrinkled her nose in annoyingly adorable distaste. "I know," she muttered. "Yuck."

Adachi shut the compendium, and was just preparing to zone out moodily at the wall and dream unhappily of Minako for a few more hours when Nanako spoke up again, interrupting him.

"I'm worried about Dad," she said.

Adachi nodded. "No kidding," he agreed. "I mean, hell, the guy's a mess, who could blame you?"

He had hoped that would be the end of the conversation, but apparently Nanako wasn't finished with him. She walked forward a few steps, planted her hands on her hips, gave an amusing rendition of her own father's exasperated stare, and then pointed an accusing finger right at Adachi's chest.

"You don't care," she told him.

"You're damn right," he agreed.

Nanako plopped herself down on the floor in front of him, and then crossed her legs, looking up at him with large, beseeching eyes. "I think he's lonely," she confided. "Even adults get lonely sometimes."

The statement was so appropriate to Adachi's own situation at the moment that it took him temporarily aback, and it was a long moment before he had anything to say. "So?" he mumbled eventually. "Guy's lonely, so he gets drunk and comes looking for the fuck-up ex-con who ruined his life? That make any sense to you?"

Nanako shook her head. "He's not looking for an ex-con, silly," she said matter-of-factly. "I think he's looking for his old partner. That's what I would do, if I was lonely. I'd look for a friend."

This time, Adachi really didn't have anything to say, and he didn't try. Instead, he played idly with two fingers on the arm of the chair, running them back and forth nervously over the upholstery as he tried to shut out Nanako's insistent gaze.

Eventually, she gave up, stood up again, and walked back towards the door.

"I guess he didn't find one," she said. "That's too bad." Then she pushed open the door and walked back out into the street. Adachi didn't watch her go. He just kept watching the fascinatingly repetitive motion of his fingers going back and forth, back and forth over the chair arm. There was bile rising in his throat and there were uncomfortable, anxious sensations spreading across his shoulders and through his knees, like there was some uncanny, distantly familiar feeling trying to force its way through to him.

"Goddamnit," he said to no one in particular. "I hate kids."

**Fin. **


	17. Distracted Detective: Chapter One

**Eighth Story: The Case of the Distracted Detective**

**Summary: **Naoto has been acting strangely, not at all like her usual self. Yosuke is too busy with his own feelings to realize what's going on, and so it's up to Chie and Yukiko to help him solve the mystery.

**Character Focus: **Yosuke, Naoto, Chie, Yukiko

**Chapter One**

The day after Yu took the train home to his parents' place, Chie went over early to pick up Yukiko from the Amagi Inn.

"So…how do you think he's gonna explain the whole thing to his parents?" asked Chie conversationally, as the two girls made their way over, as usual, to Junes. "I mean, you know, how he can suddenly walk again, and all that?"

Yukiko shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "I suppose that conversation will be easier than the one in which he had to explain how he'd come back from the dead."

That sent a little shiver down Chie's spine. "Hey," she complained, "do we have to talk about that? I…really don't want to talk about that."

"Sorry," mumbled Yukiko. "You brought it up."

It was at that moment that Chie caught sight of Naoto, sitting at one of the food court tables and staring blankly off into space. That was unusual. It was definitely weird, because Naoto, as far as Chie could remember, was not the sort of person who stared off into anything. There was always something going on in that girl's brain, and you could usually tell that the gears were turning just by looking at her face. Speaking as someone who got distracted by shiny, sharp objects, or anything that smelled good on a regular basis, Chie knew what daydreaming looked like, and Naoto Shirogane was definitely daydreaming.

"Hey, Naoto!" called Chie, giving her a friendly little wave. "What's up? You look, uh…different. You okay?"

Naoto blinked, opened her mouth, closed it, and then abruptly stood up from her seat.

"Oh," she murmured distractedly. "I…forgive me, Chie-senpai, Yukiko-senpai…I…must be going."

Chie was about to protest, but there wasn't time. Before either she or Yukiko had been able to get a word in edgewise, Naoto was off across the food court, through the gate, and gone.

"What the heck was that all about?" demanded Chie, genuinely startled. "Wow, I feel kinda snubbed…that was so sudden."

Yukiko sighed wistfully, smiling just a little bit, and just enough to get Chie's full attention. "Don't you know?" asked Yukiko. "Kanji's been griping and moaning about it all week…I guess we should have known that it was bound to happen eventually, but it does seem sort of sad that he had to find out like this. After all, he's really smitten with her…and I think that's sweet."

Chie, quite frankly, thought that the way Kanji constantly stared at Naoto was actually kind of creepy, but that was exactly the sort of "romantic" stuff that Yukiko would think of as "sweet." Anyway, she reminded herself, that wasn't the point, here. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "I don't know anything. What about Kanji and Naoto? Did something happen?"

Yukiko narrowed her eyes and leaned in confidentially. "Well," she began, "it all started after Yosuke got angry at Minako in the Velvet Room. Apparently, Naoto hasn't left his side ever since. They've been really close…like, almost inseparable." She paused significantly, as though that was all there was to the story.

Chie raised an eyebrow. "And…so what?" she asked. "I mean, I know that Naoto's been trying to cheer him up, and all, about this whole Minako and Adachi thing. Honestly, I don't know how she manages it. Yosuke's a great guy, but he's pretty hard to be around, right now…I mean, he snaps at you every time you open your mouth!"

"I think," murmured Yukiko, "that's probably why Naoto's been sighing, and looking funny, and acting so weird lately."

Chie blinked. "Because, uh, Yosuke's a pain the ass?" she ventured.

Yukiko sighed. It was one of her rare, exasperated sighs, a sigh she usually saved up for Kanji at his most clueless, or for Teddie at his most insufferable. "She likes him, Chie. She likes him a lot, and she's having a hard time getting him to pay any attention or even to be nice to her after everything that's happened lately. You said it yourself, it's probably really frustrating. No wonder she's so…well, not Naoto."

"O-oh!" Chie was honestly astonished. "Wait, Yosuke and Naoto? Okay…nope, never saw that one coming. I, um, sort of thought he liked girls that were a little bit, uh…girlier."

Yukiko frowned. "I think you're right," she said. "He usually does."

"Yikes," mumbled Chie. "That sounds pretty messy…I'm pretty sure the last girl he even liked was Minako, and, uh…that's gotta be a sore spot right now, so…"

She had more to say, but before she had a chance, Yosuke pushed open the gate and came walking across the food court towards them.

"Oh, Yosuke!" cried Yukiko, looking flustered at having been caught talking about him.

"Hey," muttered Yosuke. He didn't seem to have noticed that he was the subject of their conversation. In fact, he didn't seem to be paying much attention at all, and nodded curtly at both of them before walking straight past them and into the electronics department.

"Jeez," grumbled Chie, "it's like we're chopped liver, today…what's with everybody being so rude?"

"Love," mused Yukiko philosophically, "can be really hard sometimes…"

Chie had to think about that for a minute. As far as she knew, she'd never been in love, and the more she saw of what it turned people into, the happier that made her. Sure, there had been guys in middle school…and once, she'd even thought that maybe she had a thing for Yu, but that had been a long time ago, and besides, after what had happened with Yukiko and Rise, she'd been glad that she stayed out of it. Nope, Chie was pretty much never going to be in the mood for love, she decided, especially when it seemed to turn her friends into such dopes, and pretty often, too.

"That's no good," she announced. "I mean, Yosuke's all mopey, and Naoto's all miserable, and pretty soon Kanji's gonna be a mess, too.

"Oh," Yukiko informed her, "don't worry, he already is."

"Right," sighed Chie. "So…that's what this is, just a big, awful mess.

Yukiko just shook her head. "Well, of course, but…that's the way it is. It's not like there's anything that can be done about it. They'll have to sort it out…or maybe, if Naoto just tells him show she feels, then they'll both feel a little bit better. He'll know that there's someone out there who loves him, and then maybe he'll forget about Minako, at least for a little while. Naoto won't have so much to worry or brood about, either, once it's off her chest. I mean, that has to count for something. Still, I worry that maybe Yosuke won't be able to…"

Right, thought Chie, clenching one fist in determination. Turning on her heel, she stalked over to the door to the electronics department, and swung it open.

"Hey, Chie!" asked Yukiko, hurrying along behind her. "Wait, what are you-?"

"Yosuke!" called Chie. "Come here, I want to talk to you!"


	18. Distracted Detective: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

"Huh?" Yosuke turned around at the sound of Chie's voice, just in time to see her bearing down on him with determination and grit stamped her eyes, as she waded through a sea of confused looking teenage customers who parted before her and began whispering amongst themselves.

"Uh, hey, Chie!" Yosuke wasn't sure exactly what it was about that look, but he'd seen it several times before, and it never boded well. The fact that Yukiko was hurrying in to the store behind her, looking worried and confused only made the situation seem worse from the get-go. "Listen, I'm kinda working right now…can we talk later?"

Chie shook her head. "No," she insisted, "it's important. Tell me, what kind of girls do you like?"

Immediately the room went silent. Yosuke could feel the hairs beginning to stand up on the back of his neck as time seemed to slow down, and every pair of eyes in the room suddenly fastened in fascinated horror on his dumbstruck face. In the same instant, he began frantically trying to think up an exit strategy while his mouth worked open and closed as he figured out something ,anything to say.

"Wha…wha…wha-?" He managed, every several seconds thought. "Wait, Chie, where the hell did that come from?"

"Ooh, Chie-chan!" remarked Teddie delightedly, coming up behind them from…somewhere. "You're so bold! Oh, wait, do you have a crush on Yosuke? Really? I didn't think he'd be your type…what about me?"

"Teddie!" shouted Yosuke, his face turning purple in a combination of embarrassment and rage.

Yukiko gave her forehead an exasperated and very audible smack with the palm of one hand.

"Wait, m-me?" stammered Chie. "No way! What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with me! No, I just wanted to ask Yosuke about-!"

"Um….Chie?" Yukiko was biting her lip. "Maybe we should do this outside the store…everyone's staring."

She was right, thought Yosuke. Activity in the store did seem to have come to a complete standstill. Even the other employees had stopped what they were doing and were gazing at Yosuke and the others as though it was the most interesting respite from work they'd received all day. Probably, thought Yosuke, it was. It was already shaping up like some kind of terribly overhyped romantic comedy.

"Come on," he muttered, grabbing Chie by the wrist, and dragging her towards the door. Yukiko and Teddie followed silently.

"So? What's with the weird questions all of a sudden?" insisted Yosuke when he'd finally gotten the girls far enough away from the building and his nosy co-workers.

Yukiko and Chie exchanged one of their knowing, significant looks.

"I just want to know," repeated Chie, "what kind of girls you like, that's all. Because, you know, if there was a girl that liked you, I'd want to know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. So? Tell me."

Yosuke frowned. It was a terrifying thought, but…what if Teddie was right? What if this was about to become the strange, twisted, Chie Satonaka version of a love confession? That would be…possibly the worst thing that had happened to him all day. Not that Chie wasn't cute, or anything, but…somehow, she really, really wasn't his idea of a good date. She was a great friend, sure, and a fantastic ally in a fight. There was probably no one, besides Yu, of course, that Yosuke would rather have along with him in a tight spot, when it came down to it. Still…love? Nope, that was definitely not happening, and if that was what she was looking for…well, then, crap. Yosuke could feel the beads of sweat collecting on the back of his neck.

"What are you making that face for?" demanded Chie. "Come on, it's not that hard a question, spit it out!"

Yosuke looked at Yukiko for support. Yukiko just shrugged, and shook her head. For some reason, that was a little bit comforting. Taking a deep breath, Yosuke scratched nervously at his neck as he tried to think of a good answer.

"Girls, um…well, uh, I like girls," he started, pretty lamely.

"You sure do!" chirped Teddie. "And you've got all those great magazines under the futon to prove it!"

Yosuke just scowled at him. "Um, and I like cute girls," he went on, unwilling, suddenly, to meet either Chie or Yukiko's gaze. "Uh, girls who aren't too shy, I guess, because shy girls are hard to talk to…oh, and girls who are confident, because confidence is cute too, right?"

"Yeah, it sure is!' agreed Chie brightly. She seemed happy with the answer. Yosuke started worrying that maybe he was doing this wrong. After all, confident and extroverted kinda described Chie, didn't it? He started backtracking desperately.

"Ooh, but she has to be uh…really smart," he added hastily. "Yeah, smart girls are the best. They're always, uh…"

He didn't really have anything to finish off with, but Yosuke figured that'd be enough. Honestly, smart girls kind of scared Yosuke. Yukiko and that Mitsuru were really smart, and also gorgeous, and that combination was always a killer. Hot, but way too intense. Not that it mattered what Yosuke really thought…as long as he could figure out what he needed to say. After all, Chie was a lot of things, but she'd probably never consider herself to be the smart type. She was more of a feeler than a thinker, and even though Yosuke and the others were actually pretty impressed with some of her tactical stuff in battle, Chie herself was always putting her intellectual skills down, probably because of her repeatedly awful scores on the midterm and final exams. He was sure that saying he liked smart girls would be the way to get her off of his back, but for some reason, her face didn't change. If anything, she looked even more pleased. Now, Yosuke was puzzled. What was up with that?

"See?" said Chie, grinning at Yukiko. "I guess we were wrong about him. He's more sophisticated than we thought."

"I am?" asked Yosuke. "Uh…thanks?"

"So," continued Chie, "she's perfect for him. She's confident, and not too shy, and definitely smart…oh boy, is she smart…"

Yosuke blinked. Okay, he decided, this definitely was not about Chie. "Who is?"

"Naoto, of course," announced Chie.

"Chie!'" Yukiko was horrified. "How…how can you just say it, like that? It's not even really our secret to tell!"

"Naoto?" Yosuke just stared. "What…are you saying that you think Naoto and I should, uh…" Suddenly, he felt himself starting to laugh. It was a strange, unfamiliar feeling, and something that he couldn't remember doing in the last three or four days, at least. Ever since seeing the messed up picture of Minako and Adachi entwined in the Velvet Room, things just hadn't been funny, and it had been all that Yosuke could do to try and keep focused on the task at hand. The idea of him and Naoto, though…honestly, Yosuke wasn't even sure that Naoto had those kinds of feminine feelings. He could just picture her going out on a date, sitting across the table and psychoanalyzing the waiters, or picking each ingredient out of the food based on her detective's deductive palette. It was a pretty miserable, if hilarious image.

"That's crazy," he told them. "No, that's…the craziest thing I've ever heard. Besides, Kanji would kill me." He smiled, then, and reached out to give Chie a companionable clap on the shoulder. "Man, though…I guess I owe you one. Your crazy ideas always do seem to cheer me up, Chie. Thanks, I guess…even if, uh, you did scare the crap out of me at the beginning."

Now it was Chie's turn to look confused. "No, hey…Yosuke, I'm not messing around. Haven't you noticed? I mean, everyone's been talking about it."

"Chie…" began Yukiko warningly. It was, however, too late.

"She's totally got a crush on you!" finished Chie. "Jeez, you guys are always so clueless…and okay, I have to admit that I don't really see the appeal, but anyway, that's not the point. The point is, what do you think?"

Yosuke didn't think anything. The smile dropped off her face, and his mind went all blurry.

"Hey, Yosuke?" Chie sounded worried. "Come on…are you even listening to me?"


	19. Distracted Detective: Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

From the blankness that Yosuke's mind had blacked out to become, one treacherous thought finally surfaced.

Naoto Shirogane was a girl.

Yosuke tried to wrap his head around that, and met with a total lack of success. Sure, he knew that she was a girl. It wasn't like she tried to hide it from anyone anymore. She even looked like a girl sometimes, or at least, the other girls said that she sometimes looked like a girl. Rise was always going on about that one time at the doctor's office, when they'd compared their measurements, and Naoto had come out on top. Yosuke, frankly, found it hard to believe. The way she dressed, it was hard to tell if there was anything under there at all, and the fact that she'd point-blank refused to enter the Miss Yasogami High swimsuit competition sort of spoke for itself. Then again, if what he'd heard about that one trip to the hot springs was true, then…

"Yosuke?" asked Yukiko, sounding worried. "Your face is turning red…are you feeling all right? Look, Chie, I think maybe you're overdoing it…"

Naoto, thought Yosuke, was a girl. Kanji knew she was a girl. Kanji was freaking thrilled that she was a girl, since if she was still a boy, then that would mean that he…but he didn't, right? And Yosuke, of course, didn't' like boys. That is, he liked them, they were easier to talk to, but he didn't…like them like that, no. And since Naoto was always dressed up like a boy, and pretending to be a boy, then it would be totally weird if Yosuke liked her, because...well, because if she looked like a boy, and Yosuke was into someone who looked like a boy, then that would mean that…

"Hey, Yosuke, come on!" Chie was getting annoyed, now. "Hello? Earth to Yosuke?"

"Oh god, what are we going to tell Naoto?" muttered Yukiko. "If she finds out about this, then I refuse to have any part in it."

"What?" demanded Chie. "But you're the one who told me the secret in the first place!"

"That's…that's a totally different thing!" insisted Yukiko indignantly. "You're not the..the object of her affections."

"The object of…who says stuff like that?" Chie shook her head. "And you know I just say stuff sometimes, so you should have known better! Anyway, there's no way she's going to find out. Who would tell her? Yosuke sure won't. Look, he's so panicked he can barely even breathe right. Now he's going from red to purple."

Naoto, thought Yosuke, was definitely a girl. There was a great deal of evidence, hearsay and otherwise, to prove that she was a girl.

"Chie," he said, biting his lip hard as he tried to figure out what his next move should be. "How do you-?"

"Good afternoon, senpai," murmured Naoto, stepping out of the electronics department and crossing over towards them. "The manager said that I was likely to find you here. You seem to have caused something of a stir. I confess to some concern. Are you all right?"

Yosuke's mouth went dry. As he, Chie, and Yukiko all stared, stock still into Naoto's approaching face, Yosuke couldn't help but notice the look in those questioning eyes of hers. She had…she really had very nice eyes, he realized. They were weird, sort of grey-blue, and kinda sharp, like she was always looking right through you. They startled him, and caught his attention. How come, he wondered, he'd never noticed how striking her eyes were before?

"Naoto-kun," murmured Yukiko miserably.

Naoto glanced briefly back and forth between Yosuke and the two girls. As she read the guilty looks on their faces, and then saw the surprise on Yosuke's, she obviously must have put two and two together in that very deductive, Naoto-esque way of hers, because her face suddenly went pale, and her eyes widened slightly.

"Ah," she murmured.

"Hey-!" began Yosuke.

He was too late. Naoto, assessing the situation for what it was worth, suddenly turned on her heel and took off back in the direction of Junes. Yosuke blinked in surprise. He didn't very often see Naoto Shirogane retreating from anything. Sure, there had been a time or two in battle, but usually that was a planned withdrawal, cool, collected, and strategic. This was definitely more of a "running for her life" sort of thing.

"Oh no…" moaned Yukiko. "What are we going to do, now?"

Chie didn't have to ask. Reaching out with both arms, she took Yosuke by the shoulders and shoved him in the direction that Naoto had gone. "We're not going to do anything," she said, nodding determinedly. "You are, Yosuke. Go on."

Yosuke stared at her. "W-what the hell am I supposed to do?"

Chie shrugged. "How should I know? You're the one she has the crush on, so this is your problem!"

That, thought Yosuke, made absolutely no sense at all. He stood still for a moment, allowing himself a second of self righteous indignation at Chie's insinuation that he'd somehow caused this fiasco for himself.

"Well?"" demanded Chie impatiently. "She's probably waiting."

"If she isn't," added Yukiko, suddenly jumping teams, apparently, "then it's probably your loss."

Yosuke gave in. He went back to Junes.

As he opened the door to the electronics department, Yosuke half expected and half hoped not to find Naoto there. Unfortunately, she was huddled up in a corner, avoiding the eyes of the passers by as she played uncomfortably with the rim of her trademark hat. When he came in, though, she looked up, and seemed to try to shrink even farther back against the wall that she'd taken as refuge.

"Yosuke-senpai," she murmured.

"Uh, yeah," agreed Yosuke, wishing he'd planned or prepared something to say. "Seriously? You came back here? Was there…a plan behind this, or something? I mean, if you're running way from someone, aren't you supposed to stay away from tight corners?"

Naoto hung her head. "Regrettably," she muttered, "in a moment of confusion, I made a strategically inappropriate choice. In a word, I panicked."

That makes two of us, thought Yosuke. "Do you want to, um, go for a cup of coffee, or something?" he asked.

Naoto's eyes went even wider. "Are you…are you asking me…?" she managed.

Yosuke shook his head. "N-not exactly," he insisted hurriedly. "But, um, there are lots of people here, and they like to stare, so…"

Naoto nodded quickly. "A very reasonably point," she agreed. "Let us…let us get out of here. Quickly."

Nobody seemed to object as Yosuke left the store. Not, of course, that he had any intention of asking his manager for permission. Yosuke's work ethic was really very good, or so he prided himself, but the important thing, right now, was to get as far away from here as possible with Naoto before Teddie had another chance to pop up, figure things out, and follow them. Sure, he was on shift at the moment, but that had never stopped his nosiness before.

They left the store together in silence, and walked along side by side down and across the street towards the shopping district. Yosuke spent most of their silent stride racking his brains to try to think of what sort of place he was supposed to bring a girl at a time like this. Would Naoto even like the sort of places that a guy and a girl would go together? He wasn't even sure she enjoyed the whole dinner and a movie thing.

Then again, he reminded himself, it didn't really matter. This wasn't a date, it was just a misunderstanding that he was about to clear up.

"Senpai," murmured Naoto. She reached out and rested a hand on his arm, and for some reason Yosuke felt an electric shock go straight through his skin as at the instant of contact.

"Wh-what is it?" he stammered.

Naoto frowned at him. "You almost walked directly into the path of an oncoming car," she informed him. "Please, have more care."

Yosuke swallowed hard. Right, he thought. Sure, of course. Even at a time like this, Naoto had even sense to have his back.

She really did, he decided, have very nice eyes. Not bad hands, either.


	20. Distracted Detective: Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

"I am…truly sorry for all the trouble that I must be causing you, senpai," mumbled Naoto, after she and Yosuke had sat down across from each other at a table at Souzai Daigaku. "This is an unfortunate and highly complicated misunderstanding."

Yosuke relaxed a bit. "Oh," he said. "Right. So, Chie's crazy, huh? You don't…I mean, you would never have a…have feelings for me, I mean. Sure. I can totally picture her getting the wrong idea about everything, wouldn't be the first time." He forced a laugh, but Naoto didn't look happy. Instead, she just looked even more uncomfortable.

She shook her head, and for just a brief moment, Yosuke wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed by her denial. Sure, this whole situation was nuts, but…it wasn't every day that someone could say that a girl like Naoto had a crush on him. After all, she was pretty popular…not exactly unattractive, and…well, a guy could do worse, that was all. Not him, of course. He wasn't even thinking about that stuff, but the point was that it would still have been pretty impressive and definitely flattering, if it were true.

"I fear you mistake my meaning," intoned Naoto with almost ludicrously steady calm. "If I am correct in what I believe that Chie-senpai has said to you, then no, she's far from wrong. In fact, she is entirely accurate. It is unfortunately true that I have been entertaining…feelings for you, if that is how you would care to put it."

Yosuke blinked. "But, hey, didn't you just say that-!"

"The misunderstanding," continued Naoto inexorably, "was in your apparent presumptions in regards to my expectations."

"Expectations?" squeaked Yosuke. "Wait, what expectations?"

Naoto was, at this point, apparently ignoring him. In fact, she wasn't even looking at him, but instead at some point just past his left shoulder, as though eye contact might have been a bit more than she was wiling to risk. Carefully, as though reading from a mental script, she said "I have no desire for the nature of our relationship to change in any way, if that is your concern. I must be perfectly clear on that point."

Yosuke thought about that for a moment. "So," he muttered, "you don't want to try, like, dating or anything?"

Naoto's eyes widened, and she cleared her throat, turning slightly pink around the ears. "D-dating?" she stammered. "N-no, of course not, why…?"

"I dunno," shrugged Yosuke. "Isn't that what normally happens when you like somebody?" This conversation, he decided, was getting stranger and stranger by the second. She was just so damn calm about the whole thing. It was weird. She was the one on the spot, but somehow he was the one getting embarrassed. What was up with that?

"I would know nothing about that," murmured Naoto. "I am somewhat out of my depth, here. These feelings are new for me, and so far untested. As I understand from observation, the process of 'dating' is something that only occurs when there is a mutual attraction between two people."

Well, thought Yosuke, that was definitely true. She had him there.

There was an awkward, tense moment between them, during which Yosuke's brain continued to spin and Naoto carefully scrutinized the corner of the table.

"Well," she sighed eventually, "I believe that covers everything, unless you have any questions for me."

Yosuke found himself seriously considering asking Naoto if she were not, in fact, a robot. Any questions? Seriously? Was this a love confession or a boring second period class lecture? It felt more like the one than the other by the moment, and it was really throwing him off his game. Somehow, he felt like there should be crying here, somewhere, although he couldn't be sure if he or Naoto should be doing the crying. Hopefully her. Then again, it wasn't like she was much of the crying type.

"Nope," he managed. "I, uh…I think I get it. Thanks."

"Yes," agreed Naoto. "Then, if you'll excuse me."

She stood up, and Yosuke instinctively stood up with her. As she turned back to glance at him, he was aware of something that looked too much like hurt in her usually calculating, competent eyes.

"No, please," she insisted, shaking her head. "There is no need at all for you to accompany me. I insist that you feel free to finish your lunch."

She left, and as Yosuke watched her walk away, he was sure that there was something he was supposed to be saying right now. It was always hard to get a word in edgewise with Naoto, but even if he had found the right moment, it wasn't like he had the right words. He didn't even know where he'd missed his cue.

Sitting there alone at the table, Yosuke wondered to himself how he'd missed the signs. Had she actually given him any signs? After all, she was an ace detective, so she'd be really good at throwing people off guard, and at covering her tracks. The only reason Chie and Yukiko had probably guessed was because of Kanji, who was always staring at Naoto and probably knew when she'd had a different kind of cereal for breakfast. Not that Kanji was a creep, or anything, but…Yosuke had always been just a little annoyed about the way he was always following Naoto around.

She'd been worried about him, he realized. It had been back when they'd first come out of the Velvet Room after witnessing the Adachi and Minako fiasco, and Yosuke had been struggling just to breathe. Naoto had waited for him, talking to him and asking if he was okay. She'd had this strange, sad sort of look in her eyes then, a look that had weirded him out before, and that he could only assume was some sign of love, now. Actually, she'd been doing that sort of thing a lot, lately, now that he came to think about it.

Naoto had been the one who picked him up when he was acting like a useless sack of misery, and who had encouraged him when he'd run out of ideas. What, he wondered, would happen now? Would she avoid him? In her shoes, he knew that he'd probably do that. The thought of that kinda pissed him off, although he wasn't quite sure why. He didn't want things to be awkward between them, all of a sudden. He didn't like the idea of her keeping out of his way. Sure, maybe life sucked right now, but at least Naoto was always around to make him feel a little better. She wasn't a quitter, and that was sort of inspiring, or something, for a pseudo-leader like him. Anyway, it helped him force himself out of bed in the morning, for what that was worth.

A curly haired girl in jeans and a t-shirt walked by his table, and just for a moment, from behind, she looked a little bit like Saki. Yosuke was used to that sort of thing, by now. He saw Saki everywhere, and he'd stopped looking for her or getting excited when his mind tried to trick him into thinking that she was around the next corner. It made him think, though, of the time when he and Minako had been sitting together in Junes, and he'd started droning on at her about how Saki had been the kind of girl who'd made coming to work more exciting, and had made the mornings something to look forward to. Sure, Maybe Minako hadn't gotten him. She'd taken what he'd told her and gone off to make out with Saki's killer, and that…that wasn't even something Yosuke wanted to think about, right now. Naoto, though, Naoto was different. Naoto got it. She got what it meant to care about somebody, to help them up when they were falling down. She knew how valuable that extra boost of confidence was, and she'd wanted to give that to him. That was something. No, it was more than something. It had kept him going when things got crazy tough.

"Hey, Naoto!" he called after her, standing up and looking off in the direction that she'd gone.

It was too late, though. He couldn't see her anyway. She'd probably run for it, again.


	21. Distracted Detective: Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

Yosuke ran off down the street. Naoto couldn't, he knew, have gotten that far ahead of him, even if she was running for her life.

He wasn't wrong. Only a few minutes later, he caught up her with as she was about to turn the corner and head down the road back towards her grandpa's place.

"Naoto!" he shouted, waving his arms emphatically as he rushed to catch up with her. "Hey, Naoto, hang on a second!"

Naoto stopped in her tracks, turned around, and raised an eyebrow at him. He was pretty sure that he saw her wince as they made eye contact.

"Yes, senpai?" she asked politely. "Was there something else?"

"Uh, yeah," mumbled Yosuke. "Listen, my shift ends at three o'clock today, okay? So…I dunno, do you want to maybe go somewhere after I'm done with work? Nowhere fancy, though, I'm kinda broke at the moment."

The question caught Naoto completely off of her guard. Yosuke was almost impressed with himself when he saw her mouth drop open in sheer surprise.

"You mean…with you?" asked Naoto, a bit shakily. "On an evening out? Is this…would this be a 'date?'"

Yosuke didn't really have a good answer to that. With Naoto, he figured, honesty here would probably be his best bet.

He shrugged. "Uh, actually, I don't really know. Is that…is that okay? Anyway, can't we sort of figure that out when we get there?"

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Naoto's eyes narrowed, and she gave him a long, appraising look. "I would hate to cast aspersions, but…you are not making fun of me, are you, senpai? I am sure that I need not inform you that such a joke, at the moment, would be in very poor taste."

Yosuke threw up his hands in protest. "What? No way! I would never do something like that."

Naoto nodded once, and she took a quick breath. "Yes," she murmured. "Yes, of course, I…should never have asked you that. You're not like that at all. You're…you're quite different than most people."

Again, her ears went pink, and Yosuke found himself smirking a little. It was almost cute the way she tried not to blush like that. "So?" he asked. "Are you, uh, coming with me?"

Again, Naoto nodded. "I think I would like that," he said quietly. "Yes. Thank you, that would be…very nice."

Yosuke's heart suddenly felt a bit lighter. "Great," he said. "Yeah, um, I guess I'll come by your Grandpa's house after work, okay?"

Naoto shook her head. "There's no need," she assured him. "I will meet you, as usual, at the food court."

They went their separate ways, then. Naoto headed home, and Yosuke returned to work, where he was sure that he would now have a lot of questions to answer, both from his boss and coworkers, and from Chie, Yukiko, and Teddie, who would definitely be lying in wait to ambush him as soon as he walked in.

It didn't really mater, though, he thought, reaching out to push open the door. He could take it. He had no idea just what he'd say, but there were way more important things to worry about right now, like…where the hell was he going to take Naoto after work? At least she probably wasn't the kind of girl who'd expect him to pay for it…

**Fin.**


	22. The Truth About Love

**Ninth Story: The Truth About Love**

**Summary: **Minako has a question for Adachi, but frankly, Adachi's tired of everyone asking him questions. He's ready for some answers. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Adachi, Minako.

"Tohru?"

Adachi froze as soon as he heard her voice. He'd been sitting in Igor's chair with his feet up on the arm of his own, staring, as usual, at the far wall when the tapping of her footsteps had first echoed against the floor. As he heard her approach him from behind, he tried to control his face, which was stiffening and tingling with a strange, awkward sort of tension that was forcing him into some cross between a smile and a grimace as he desperately begged himself not to spin around and reach for her.

"Hi there," he managed, making a big show of taking his time about turning around, throwing one arm lazily over the chair back as he made himself face her. "What are you doing here?"

Minako smiled, and her smile lit up the room. Adachi decided he'd preferred it before, when it was gloomy and boring. Now, his heart was pounding like an overworked metronome on speed. Damn, he thought. He'd been sure that he was over this part. So much for that, huh?

"I wanted to see you," she said. "I..I was worried about you."

The tenderness in her voice made him feel a little sick. "Why?" he snarled. "What's to worry about?"

Minako blinked. "Your injury," she reminded him, looking a bit uncertain of her ground for the first time. "You…well, there was a lot of blood. I thought-!"

"I'm fine," interrupted Adachi coldly.

"Oh," murmured Minako."Well, that's good. I'm glad."

Long, uncomfortable pauses were always worse in the Velvet Room, reflected Adachi as the moments ticked by between them. There was something so creepily soundless about the place. It made all the unsaid stuff feel even louder.

"How about you?" he asked, after a moment, cursing himself inwardly as he listened to his voice softening despite his best resolve. "You been wearing yourself out with this persona crap?"

Minako shook her head. "No, thank you. I'm fine. I'm getting used to it, again."

"Yeah," grunted Adachi. Again, there was that horrible, audible silence. "Anyway," he said eventually, "I told you not to come back here. Not unless you've got something for me."

He sneered at her, hoping to repulse her and frighten her off, if only to stop the aching feeling in his chest that he got whenever he couldn't keep from looking at her. He should have known better. Minako, the idiot, wasn't scared of anything, and definitely not of him. She barely had enough sense for half a person, that way.

"I wanted to ask you something," she informed him.

Adachi rolled his eyes. "Jeez, you and everybody else. What's with the game of twenty questions, huh? First Dojima-san, now you…"

That seemed to perk Minako up a bit. "Oh, Dojima-san's been here?" she asked. "Did you talk much?"

Adachi shut that one down pretty quickly. "Nope," he said. "I threw him out on his ass. Literally. Same thing I'm gonna do to you if you don't hurry up. So, what's this big question?"

Minako nodded thoughtfully, biting her lip in that obnoxiously adorable way she had. "Tohru," she said again. God, he loved the way she said his name. He hated that about her. "Tohru, do you want me to be happy?"

Adachi was too annoyed to be really surprised. Actually, most what came out of Minako these days didn't surprise him. If it was what he was least expecting, then he'd begun to learn to expect it. Still, it was definitely a weird question, and it made the blood start to boil through his insides as he took a deep breath, and prepared to bite out the answer.

"What the hell kind of a dumbass question is that?" he asked, through gritted teeth. "Hey, I don't know, maybe you forgot, but I'm the guy who nearly bled out through his chest just because I wanted you to like me. That not good enough? Want me to slice myself open again, maybe cut off a limb, this time, and limp around for a bit begging you to want me anyway? That more your style?"

He'd half expected her to cry, or at least to look hurt, but, of course, Minako didn't even flinch. "That's not what I mean," she told him seriously. "I'm not talking about…about us. You did that because you wanted me to stay with you. I'm talking about me. I want to know if you want me to be happy."

That really did take Adachi aback. It was possibly the most genuinely selfish thing he'd ever heard her say, and he kind of liked it. "Where'd that come from?" he asked.

Minako frowned. "I've been thinking a lot," she told him, sitting down in front of him on the Velvet Room floor. "I've been thinking about what you asked me to do, and about what you want me to say to Yosuke. I didn't understand at first, because I couldn't figure out why that's what you wanted. Why would it matter? We've…we've done all of the things that lovers do. We've been that person to one another. Why would you need me to say it? It wouldn't change the things we do, or what you get out of this. It wouldn't change anything, would it?"

Adachi didn't have anything to say to that. He was too busy trying not to think about the "things that lovers do," which Minako had referenced so glibly. He was trying not to think about those things very, very hard.

"Then I realized," she went on, around his discomfort. "It's not about us at all. We won't change if I tell Yosuke…well, what you want me to tell him. It's just that you want to know if I can live with myself if I say it out loud. If I admit it, then you want to know if I can stomach it. You want to know how saying it out loud will make me feel, don't you? I'm sure that's it."

"That's crap," muttered Adachi. "You're over thinking it. I just want-!"

"So in a way," insisted Minako, cutting him off, "I think you do want me to be happy. You want me to be happy with you. It's not worth it the other way, is it?"

Adachi just shook his head. "Hell if I even know any more," he told her, shaking his head. For some reason, that made Minako smile.

"I'm glad you're all right, anyway," she said, getting to her feet again and taking a step closer to his chair. "You look…tired, though. I know you don't need sleep, here, but there are lines under your eyes, like you're exhausted." Carefully, she traced one finger along Adachi's cheek, just below his eyelid. It reminded him of that time at the riverbank, when she'd hurried to assure him that he was human to the touch.

"Knock it off," he mumbled. Minako ignored him.

Instead, she ran a hand through his hair, looking into his eyes in a way that he wasn't used to, mostly because she'd never really been able to look into his eyes like that before.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

There was something in those words that pissed him off, made him desperate. He didn't want to hear "I'm sorry." He didn't want her to apologize, because he didn't want there to be anything to apologize for. It made it sound like there wasn't anything else to come, like she'd already decided to feel bad about not doing something he was still frantically hoping she'd do. Without thinking about it, he caught her hand against his cheek and pressed it there, bringing her fingers to his lips and savoring that contact for a moment.

"Tohru," she whispered.

Whatever had gotten a hold on him suddenly released him again, and he dropped her hand like a flaming dead fish. It fell with a little smack against her side, and he scowled down at it, like it had become the enemy in that moment.

"I told you before," he said, turning away from her again. "I don't want your pity. I don't need 'sorry.' That shit's no use. Just…just get out, will you?"

"Okay," said Minako quietly. "I'll go."

And, somewhat to Adachi's horror, she did. He heard her footsteps retreating across the floor, and when he turned around again to look for her, she'd already disappeared through the Velvet Room door.

"Wha-?" he whispered, his lips and cheek still actively tingling from her touch.

"You," intoned Igor from somewhere behind him, "are truly terrible at communicating with other humans. It is…interesting. I am not sure that I have ever had the privilege of watching such a complex and disastrous interpersonal failure as you have proven to be. Intriguing."

Adachi glowered at him.

Much like Minako, however, Igor didn't seem to care.

**Fin. **


	23. To Whom it May Concern: Chapter One

**Tenth Story: To Whom it May Concern**

**Summary: **Nanako exchanges a couple of painstakingly handwritten letters with Ken, and finds that writing things down is sometimes the key to helping them make sense in her own head.

**Character Focus: **Nanako, Ken.

**Chapter One**

Nanako frowned down at a big piece of lined paper that she'd brought home from her teacher's desk at school.

She did not, as a rule, like writing letters. Handwriting and penmanship were not two things that Nanako was not very good at, no matter how hard she'd tried, and she really had tried. She always knew what it was she'd written, and she could read it back to her Dad or to her teacher just fine, but whenever someone else tried to read it aloud, they struggled to figure out the curly parts of her Rs and Ps, and where her S began and her T stopped.

That had bothered her a lot in kindergarten, but when she'd moved into first grade, it didn't seem to matter so much. After all, in first grade the teacher had a computer, and she showed them how to use it. After that, writing homework was easy for Nanako. She'd just type her stories and her responses up on the computer, and have Dad print them out before school the next day. It wasn't that she ever had trouble coming up with ideas, or answering the questions. She just couldn't write the letters the way she wanted. The computer was the perfect solution. Nanako, of course, got excellent grades. That was very important o her. Mom would have been really happy with her clever daughter's grades, she thought.

Today, though, when Nanako had walked in to her Dad's room to ask him to use the computer, she'd hit a snag. He'd been busy, very busy, the kind of busy that made his hair all crazy and his eyes sort of big and scary looking. She'd asked him if she could type something, and he'd waved her away with one hand, not even looking at her. Whatever he was doing was obviously important, or at least, whatever Nanako was going to do wasn't important enough. It had been like that a lot lately, with Dad. He always seemed to be thinking about something else, and it was never something that looked very nice to think about, or made him smile.

There hadn't been any other way around it, so Nanako had taken a deep breath, summoned her courage, and sat down at her little desk in her own room to try and write a letter.

The letter began like this (or at least, it would have if anyone could actually read it, Nanako reasoned):

_Dear Ken-kun,_

_Hello! Can you read what I am writing? My teacher says that my handwriting is not good, so I do not know, but I will try. I hope it is not too hard. I wanted to type it, but Dad is busy with the computer, so maybe this will work. _

_How are you? We are all very busy here. Big Bro went back to school last week. That was sad. He said that he will visit, though, in two months for the spring break! I am excited! Maybe you can visit too. I think Big Bro would like it if you and the others came back. We are sort of lonely here, now. I wish you did not go away._

_Everyone here is very quiet. No one is happy, but I do not know why. They all are angry a lot and talking to each other like they do not want anyone to hear. Dad does not say much, he mostly works, but that is not new. Oh, but you will like to know this: Minako is fine. She is doing much better, and her eyes work now so she can see lots of stuff and will not get hit by a car, I think. That is good! I like Minako. I wish everyone was not so angry. I am not angry. _

_Minako does not go to work anymore. Dad says it is better because he is angry, but I think he misses her because there are too many phone calls. Minako likes work, so I do not know why she does not go. Maybe she is angry, too. Or maybe sad. Sometimes, I am sad. _

_Everyone is angry, here. I am lonely. Is it nice where you live? I would like to visit. Would that be okay? I hope that is not a rude thing to ask. Dad says that it is rude to invite myself to some place, but it is not an invitation, I am just asking. _

_Thank you for being so nice when you were here. It made me very happy. Please come back soon. _

_Your Friend_

_Nanako Dojima_

Nanako read the letter over again twice before folding it up and slipping it into an envelope.

Well, she thought. At least she could read all of the words.


	24. To Whom it May Concern: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

Three days later, Nanako came in after spending some time playing outside with her friends, to find a sealed envelope sitting on the kitchen table. The envelope had her name on it, and so she decided that, since it was addressed to her, she could probably get away with opening it without asking Dad about it first.

She took it into her bedroom, and flopped down on the bed, shaking her shoes off of her feet over the side of the bed before stretching out and eagerly tearing the letter open, trying to be careful enough not to mess up whatever paper was inside.

Of course, the letter was from Ken, which was wonderful. Nanako, who was a good reader, still had to be a little more careful than usual as she worked her way through each of the words. After all, Ken was a lot older than she was. He was already in middle school. He knew a lot of very long words. Still, Nanako decided that she would read the whole thing by herself. Somehow, she didn't want Dad to know that she was writing to Ken. There was no good reason for that, but it was a feeling, and she'd learned long ago that feelings weren't something to be ignored. They usually meant something, something important, even if she couldn't figure out what that was or what they were for right away.

The letter, once Nanako had managed, with some difficulty, to read through it, was written like this:

_Dear Nanako-chan,_

_I think your writing is very good. Reading your letter was easy, actually. Thank you for writing to me._

_Thank you also for telling me about Minako. We're all a little worried about her, here, but it's great to know that she can see and is doing better. Yes, I'm pretty sure she won't get hit by a car, now, and that's definitely good, but please keep an eye on her anyway, just in case. She gets herself into a lot of trouble. Akihiko-san says that's just who she is. Shinjiro-san says other things, but maybe I won't write them in this letter. I like Minako too. How is Junpei-san? Maybe he's even more trouble than she is. She looks out for him, I know, but it can be really hard. I remember that from when we all lived together at the dorm. Sorry, but could you keep an eye on him too?_

_Sorry that everyone's still angry. Well, not everyone, right? Kanji and Naoto aren't angry, are they? Actually, how is Kanji? I can't really tell you why I want to know that, but maybe you'll figure it out for yourself, you are pretty good at figuring things out._

_Oh, yeah, that's what I wanted to say. I don't think you should be so sad. You're a really happy person. That's great. You're fun to be around. Maybe that's what people need; someone who can help them figure out how to have fun again. You're always smiling. It's nice, it picks people up. Maybe you should just do that. It's hard to be in a bad mood when you're around. I know someone else who used to be like that. Can you guess who it is? I like her a lot, too. _

_Of course you can come visit. That would be fun. Not spring break though, because your cousin is coming, right? See, I told you I could read your letter. How about next summer? I live with Akihiko-san. Is that okay? Maybe you should stay with girls. Wait, I think your Dad is probably reading this to you. Hello, Dojima-san, sir. Yes, you should stay with girls. _

_It was fun to hear from you. Please write again,_

_Your friend,_

_Ken Amada_

Nanako folded the letter up carefully, and tucked it back into the envelope. She felt really good about that letter. Not only had been able to read it, but he'd been happy to get it! She'd been worried that maybe he thought she was annoying. She thought he was so cool.

As she placed the envelope into her dresser drawer, Nanako thought about what Ken had said. Was being happy really enough to make other people happy? Thinking about the look she'd seen a few days ago on her dad's face, and the way that everyone was wandering around looking miserable and not talking to one another, Nanako really didn't think so.

Still, Ken was a lot older than her, and he knew lots of things about people.

Maybe it was worth giving happiness a try.


	25. Armageddon: Chapter One

**Eleventh Story: Armageddon**

**Summary: **When the leaders of both teams finally meet after long absences from the Velvet Room, tensions are so high that one little understanding leads to a potentially disastrous physical altercation. True colors are brought out by emergencies like these. So are the worst parts of all of us.

**Character Focus: **Yosuke, Minako, Adachi, Junpei, Naoto.

**Chapter One**

With only three days to go until he had to take the train back to college, Yosuke had a lot of thinking to do.

A lot of stuff had happened since he'd first come home for the winter break, so much that he had trouble wrapping his head around just where it all began and ended. He felt like a totally different person than he'd been when he'd started all of this back in December, and there parts of him that had changed so much he didn't recognize them in the midst of the rest of himself, anymore.

He hadn't he knew, been a very good leader. Most of what he considered his time in a leadership position had been spent flailing around and asking other people to help him figure out what to do next and how to stop panicking about it. Even little Nanako had been more put together about the whole thing than he had been, most of the time. There wasn't much there that he was really proud of. All of the things he'd tried to become and wanted to turn into had just left him feeling confused about what sorts of things he really was, and how that fit into the big picture of the person he was supposed to be growing into. Now he wasn't a leader, and wasn't even really a persona user, anymore, since there wouldn't be much more use for that. That was great, since it meant that everything was cleared up, but…what did that mean about where he was going? What was he supposed to do now?

The real world was waiting for him, and he could go back to school, now, and live a normal life again…that is, if "normal" was actually a real thing that existed, that anyone could really go back to. Yosuke had forgotten how to make sense out of normal. The real world was miles away from what he was used to, these days.

Then, of course, there was Naoto. After their little 'date' at the movies the other day, she seemed pretty happy, and even he had to admit to himself that he'd really had a good time. She was easy to talk to, maybe because of how comfortable they'd always been around each other as members of the investigation team, and she got him on levels that other 'normal' people probably wouldn't. Still, it wasn't like they'd talked about her feelings for him after that one awkward afternoon at Souzai Daigaku, and Naoto seemed perfectly happy not to ever bring it up in conversation again. She wasn't gonna broach it, and Yosuke didn't have the balls, quite frankly.

That, he knew, would be a problem, when he left in three days. Being miles away at college was going to change the situation, whatever that was, and maybe it would be better to get that sorted about before he ran off to try and live his life the way most kids did. Plus, he knew, there was Chihiro-senpai. A couple of months ago, he'd been trying to work up the courage to ask her out, or at least to ask her to spend more time with him outside of the library. Was that still the plan? That whole thing felt like such a long time ago…but if he did go back, and did try to fit back into his life and into Chihiro's life, then what would that do to Naoto? Would she be angry? Would she be sad? Would she go running back to cry on Kanji's shoulder?  
That made Yosuke sneer to himself. Sure, like Kanji could ever really be on the same plane of reality as someone like Naoto. Yeah, he liked Kanji, even respected him sometimes, but…seriously? With Naoto? That could never happen, right?

Yosuke knew he needed help in the worst way, and there was only one person he felt comfortable asking about any of this, and especially about the Naoto stuff. Sure, Chie and Yukiko were great, and he'd trust them with his life any day, but this was not his life. This had to do with something much scarier than any shadow battle would ever be.

With that in mind, he pulled out his cellphone and dialed the most frequently called number. It took a second before the person on the other end picked up.

"Hey," said Yu. There was street noise in the background as he talked. "What's up? Haven't heard from you in a few days."

"You out of school?" asked Yosuke.

"Yeah," replied Yu. "Just walking home now. Why?"

The idea of Yu "walking home" from school made Yosuke grin to himself. Okay, so the leadership thing hadn't been a total failure, in the end.

"Um, you free later?" he asked. "I was wondering if maybe I could talk to you about something."

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Yosuke sighed. Yu was always pretty good at figuring out the exact nature of whatever Yosuke's "something" was, just y listening to the tones in his voice. Part of his people skills, Yosuke guessed.

"What's up this time?" asked Yu again.

Yosuke shook his head. "Girls," he muttered.

"Girls?" Now, Yu sounded startled. "Wait, really? Yeah, sure I'm free. Want me to meet you in the Velvet Room?"

They agreed on a time, and then Yosuke hung up, slipping his phone back into his pocket and starting off in the direction of the Velvet Room street entrance. Long distance friendships, he reflected, were a pain in the ass, but being friends with a guy who could travel through TVs definitely had its advantages. Sure, it would take Yu hours to get there by train, but using the TV world took care of it in no time. That, he realized, might be his solution to the Naoto problem…sort of. Part of the Naoto problem, anyway.

It was only as he opened the Velvet Room door that Yosuke remembered why it was that he'd tried not to make a habit of using the Velvet Room as a meeting place.

"Aw, crap," muttered Adachi, looking up from the persona compendium on which it looked like he might have been drawing a stupid moustache. "And here I thought my day just couldn't get any worse…"

Yosuke gritted his teeth. Yeah, he thought. It was like the guy had taken the words right out of his mouth.


	26. Armageddon: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

"Sup?" muttered Junpei, appearing out of the Velvet Room shadows to give Yosuke a surly look.

Yosuke just stared at him. "Wait…seriously? You too? The hell's going on here?"

Junpei and Adachi exchanged a far from friendly look. "Don't know what you're talking about," retorted Junpei with a shrug "I'm just waiting for Minako. She said she wanted to do some training, to work off some of that stress, I guess." He glared at Yosuke, and said, with obvious accusation in his voice, "Gee, I wonder what she's so stressed out about…any ideas, Yosuke?"

Adachi rolled his eyes. "Don't look at me," he mumbled, "I just work here." He gave the walls of the Velvet Room a bored, disinterested glance, and then turned back around to face Yosuke with a malicious glint in his eyes. "I don't know, though," he told Junpei, with a complete lack of effort at sincerity. "Maybe you shouldn't be so tough on this guy. I mean, it's gotta be pretty hard, watching your worst enemy get the girl you always wanted. Cause hey, Yosuke, you know I'm fucking her, right? Oh yeah, you've definitely been thinking about that…hell, it's written all over your jealous, piece of shit face. Yeah, that's definitely gotta suck."

Junpei bit his lip, hard. "Don't talk about her like she's some kinda piece of meat," he growled. "She's too good for you, anyway."

"And hey," continued Adachi glibly, obviously beginning to enjoy this. "That's two little girlfriends you've lost to me now, right? Damn that really…that's pretty bad. No, I totally get why you're pissed. I'd be pissed off too. Yeah, I'd…"

Yosuke saw red. There was sweat running down the back of his neck as he completely failed to tune Adachi out. Before he'd had time to get a hold of himself and figure out what he was doing, he had lunged at Adachi, and was grabbing the other man around the throat with both hands.

"Shit," managed Adachi hoarsely.

With one energetic shove, Yosuke threw Adachi into the nearest Velvet Room wall. Adachi raised an arm to defend himself, but it never connected with Yosuke at all. Adachi looked just as surprised as Yosuke was when his blow didn't reach his opponent.

"What the-?" began Adachi.

From somewhere in the recesses of the room, Igor's voice echoed out at them, firm and cold.

"The attendant," bellowed Igor, "is forbidden from harming the guests. You will not raise a hand against our visitors, Tohru Adachi."

"Shit," snarled Adachi again.

Yosuke snorted derisively. "Isn't it a little late for that?" he demanded. "Hasn't he harmed enough people already? Hasn't he harmed me enough?" Adding emphasis to his words, he slammed Adachi's head against the wall again, and was a little freaked out by how much enjoyed listening to the crack as Adachi's skull connected to whatever sort of magical, psychologically-based concrete the walls were made of. Adachi grunted in pain, and that was good, too.

Junpei suddenly stepped forward and shoved Yosuke off of Adachi, placing himself between the two of them. "Hey, knock it off," he said. "Look, I don't like him any better than you do, but-!"

Yosuke, however, was way past the point of seeing reason. He could still hear Adachi's last taunt about losing Saki and Minako to him. It was echoing around in his head in those insane, taunting tones of voice that Adachi always used whenever Yosuke imagined any kind of conversation with him.

"You have no fucking idea what you're talking about," Yosuke spat at Junpei.

"No, look," insisted Junpei. "I get it, I get that he's a piece of shit, but the guy can't even defend himself. This is crazy, you're not…I mean, okay. I hate you. You hate me. Sure, cool, but you're not the kind of guy to beat up someone without a weapon, right? So come on, man, let this one go."

"You don't get it," shouted Yosuke. "How the hell could you ever get it?" He spun angrily on Junpei. "You're always acting like you're such a smart guy, like you know everything. You don't. You don't know anything about this, you don't know what it's like to feel like this, to have someone taken away from you. You don't-!"

"Minako," muttered Junpei.

Yosuke just shook his head fiercely. "She came back!" He almost screamed. "She fucking came back!"

There was silence between them for the longest instant in Yosuke's memory, and then suddenly he heard the door open, and a familiar set of footsteps were echoing against the floor.

"Yosuke-senpai?" called Naoto, stepping into the light. "Chie-senpai said that you might have come here…wait, what are you doing?"

Yosuke turned around to answer Naoto, and Junpei took advantage of that moment to grab him by the arm and try to pull him forcefully away from Adachi. Yosuke responded to that by hauling off and punching Junpei in the jaw, which sent him staggering back until he sank down on to the ground, holding his face and sputtering angrily while he spat out blood. That, thought Yosuke, felt good too, and it felt even better when he remembered that he owed Junpei one from the hit he'd taken a few days ago in that awful Velvet Room conflict when he'd first found Adachi and Minako together.

Yosuke was feeling pumped up and positive, until he looked up and saw the shocked, almost accusing expression on Naoto's face. She crossed over towards where Junpei had fallen, and as she moved, her gun tumbled out of its holster and on to the ground. Just a few feet short of where Junpei was sitting, Naoto paused, bent down, and retrieved her gun. She stood up again, and opened her mouth to speak, but never had the chance.

Yet again, Yosuke heard the Velvet Room door open. Junpei and Naoto looked up to see who it was, but Yosuke was too busy staring at Junpei, shaking his head and taking deep breaths, trying to bring himself back to the moment.

"Junpei," he muttered. "Um…that was…I didn't…"

Adachi muttered a strangled curse, and Yosuke finally did look up, just in time to figure out why everyone else in the room had gone suddenly, disturbingly quiet.


	27. Armageddon Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

Minako was feeling strained to her limits. It had been days since she'd had any really good sleep, and the subsequent headaches were keeping her permanently on edge. There were very few places that she seemed to be able to go to relax. When she was alone at home, her mind kept running in circles over the mess she'd made of things in Inaba, and she had to force herself not to want to think about or rush off to try and see Tohru. Every time she left the house, she risked running into Naoto, Rise, or one of the countless others who would glare at her as she walked by. She hated the sick, guilty way that made her feel, especially since she was still pretty sure that the only wrong she'd done was to care about someone when no one else did. In any case, lately it had been easier juts to keep her head down, but that got lonely and she ended up driving herself to distraction.

Minako wasn't usually the sort of person who engaged in combat just for fun, but when Junpei had suggested training together in the TV world, she'd jumped at the chance. Maybe that, she thought, would at least allow her to let off a little bit of stress and steam. Plus, partnering up with Junpei for anything always proved to be an excellent distraction.

Unfortunately, that day she had lost track of time, and so she was late to the Velvet Room to meet him. She heard the raised voices behind the door before she opened it, and therefore hurried in immediately when she realized that she'd inadvertently left Junpei and Yosuke alone together. Yosuke, of course, was one of the last people on earth that Minako wanted to see or speak to right now, but she knew how he felt about Junpei. They had been at odds since the very beginning, and who knew what could happen if they were left to their own devices?

"Junpei!" she called, as the door closed behind her. "I'm sorry I'm late, I was just-!"

Her voice faltered and failed her as she took in the scene.

Yosuke was standing with arm raised, while Junpei sat in front of him on the floor, looking furious. There was obviously at fight in progress. Tohru was there, too, but Minako barely had time to notice him. She was too busy gaping at Naoto, who was standing over Junpei with her gun clutched in one hand.

As soon as Junpei saw Minako, he began struggling to his feet. "Mina-tan," he said warningly, crossing over to her and taking a hold of her shoulder. "Hey, this isn't what it looks like, okay?"

Minako continued to stare fixedly at the gun. She could feel herself breathing differently, strangely, as though it was harder to get the air in and out.

"Hey," exclaimed Junpei. "Are you listening to me? Look, look at me."

Minako, however, was not listening. She couldn't see Junpei either, not really. All she could see now was the horrible image behind her eyes, the image of the recurring nightmare that she'd been having for years. It was the one where she watched while Naoto shot Junpei in the chest, the one where she screamed while Junpei bled to death on the floor and she begged him not to give up. It felt real, very real now, while Yosuke stood there staring and Naoto held on tightly to her weapon, as though getting ready for the next attack.

Junpei was her only real safe haven, she thought. He was the only person she could genuinely rely on all the time, without fail. He was the one who had been willing to make sacrifices for her, even moral ones, and take risks just to stand between her and her own selfish, foolish decisions.

"Mina-tan," repeated Junpei.

Something that had been stretching dangerously inside the panicked, stifled parts of Minako's mind finally weakened and snapped.

"Junpei?" she asked, in a voice that felt strange, like it came from someone else, someone very far away. "Are you okay?"

Junpei tightened his grip on her. "Yeah," he assured her quickly. "I'm fine. See? I'm okay." He forced a laugh. "Takes more than a wimpy punch like that to get ol' Junpei down, huh? So come on, let's go. We can train another day."

He kept tugging on Minako's arm, but she wasn't moving. Instead, her eyes were locked now on Yosuke, who was starting to look freaked out, and was backing farther and farther away from her.

Junpei's evoker was lying at his feet, where he must have dropped it when he fell. Slowly, Minako picked it up and ran her fingers over its contours.

"He's not the one you want, is he, Yosuke?" murmured Minako. "No, it's me, right? I'm the one you're angry at. If you're looking for a fight…then you can have one. You can have it with me."

"Wait, hang on," began Yosuke. "What the hell? I don't want to-!"

"Minako-chan, please," said Naoto. "This is foolish. We are all guilty of an unfortunate misunderstanding, and a lapse in moral judgment…perhaps one that has gone on, by this time, for far too long."

Minako barely even heard them. She kept seeing blood, Junpei's blood, in the back of her mind. It was everywhere in her head, just the way Tohru's blood had been everywhere only weeks ago when she'd rushed to his side after he'd nearly murdered himself in the nightmare room. She was not going to let that happen to someone else. She was not going to let Junpei get hurt because of her. Not again. Not ever.

Aigis was right, thought Minako. In the real moment of crisis, in the real instant of decision, she knew exactly what to do. She was the leader, the leader of SEES, not of anyone else. She had responsibilities to the people who had her back, just the way Yosuke felt he did.

Minako lifted Junpei's' evoker to her head, and pulled the trigger.

"Messiah," she whispered, as her persona exploded into physical being. "Megidolaon."


	28. Armageddon: Chapter Four

**Author's Note: **My goodness, the responses to the last few chapters have...well, interesting and in many cases unexpected, to say the least. I am not quite sure what I have done, here.

Oh well, I suppose it is far too late to turn back now.

**Chapter Four**

Yosuke jumped backwards, just in time to avoid the first Almighty blast that came from Minako's persona. Without stopping even to catch her breath, Minako readied Messiah for a second attack.

Caught up in the onslaught and the blinding images of blood, she was only barely aware of the frantic conversation going on behind her.

"This is…insanity," Naoto was saying. "They cannot…they must not fight each other like this. Nothing could possibly be worth…this is horrible. What have we created?"

"Nah, you've got it all wrong," muttered Junpei, having finally let go of Minako when her persona had materialized. "She's not gonna fight him…hell, she's gonna kill him."

"What?" squeaked Naoto. "No, you're…you're overreacting. That is a tasteless exaggeration. They're comrades, we are all comrades. We could never-!"

"She thought you were going to kill me!" shouted Junpei, suddenly reaching out and shaking Naoto by the shoulders. "Don't you get it? Did you see the look on her face when she walked in? We lost control of this situation a long time ago, damnit. Frankly, so did she, and it's been a long time coming. It's not her damn fault. What the hell are you waiting for?" Releasing her, he jerked his head towards Yosuke, who now seemed to have pulled himself together enough to summon Susano-o and to prepare something of a defense. "I thought you had a thing for him. So? Get in there and defend him! Now!"

Another blast of Megidolaon met a gust of Garudyne midway between Yosuke and Minako, and the collision of the two powerful attacks rocked even the non-existent foundations of the Velvet Room.

"I could hurt her," murmured Naoto, obviously torn. "I don't wish to hurt her, I…I never wanted for any of this to happen. I treasured our alliance, I-!"

This time, the attack did connect, and Yosuke stumbled. Naoto's head snapped around and there was suddenly fire in her eyes as she placed her hand on the gun she'd newly retrieved.

"If you don't do something," insisted Junpei, "then she's gonna beat the shit out of him. Minako's no slouch, okay? You don't save the world by being a lightweight. She'll be fine. Go at least put up a defensive barrier, or something." As Yosuke's persona made a lunge for Minako's unprotected right side, Junpei rushed forward to parry the thrust with his own weapon. "But you better not fucking hurt her, or I'll kill you."

"That…that makes no sense at all!" exclaimed Naoto frantically. Nevertheless, as Minako prepared a physical attack, Naoto summoned her persona and assumed a combat stance, her eyes darting back and forth between Yosuke, Minako, and the newly determined set of Junpei's injured jaw.

For the first time, as Junpei moved in beside her, Minako glanced away from her opponent's face.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "Get out of here, this is my fight."

"This is nobody's fight," muttered Junpei, shaking his head. "This is a nightmare. It's a mess, that's what it is. Snap out of it, huh? Before somebody gets really hurt…probably me. You know, cause I'm not leaving till you do, so. You do the math."

Minako, dutifully, did the math.

"I won't let anything happen to you," she assured him. "I promise."

Junpei sighed. "Why didn't that work?" he asked of no one in particular. "That should have worked…jeez, we're all gonna die. Come on, let's just go…"

Minako had Yosuke in her sights again. She just managed to duck out of the way of a physical hit and was about to lob yet another fiercely magical volley in his direction when she was aware of a pair of hands gripping her wrists from behind, She tried angrily to pull away, but whoever was hanging on to her wasn't giving up so easily.

"Let go of me," she snarled.

"So you can do what?" asked Tohru. "So you can kill him? Is that what you want?"

That tugged at something in the back of Minako's clouded head, and she paused for a moment, trying to think genuinely about the answer to that question. Was that what she was trying to do? Would that end all of this? Would that make this horrible, bloody mess of misery in her head go away?

"Because I'm pretty sure you've completely lost it," continued Tohru. There was something so level, so relaxed about his voice that it caught her off guard. He wasn't anxious, or frantic, or panicked. He was wry and unconcerned, just the way he always was. The perverseness of that was cutting through to Minako, making her angry and confused at the same time.

"You want to know something? Yeah, well, I don't care, cause obviously I'm gonna tell you anyway," Tohru said quietly. "I don't know if you can even hear me through whatever self righteous messiah-complex shit you've got going on in there. You wanna end up like me? You wanna spend the rest of your life in some kind of smelly prison, wondering what might have been different if you'd played it another way? You wanna be the monster old people tell their stupid kids about when they're trying to get them to go the fuck to sleep and stop begging for more stories? That what you want? That gonna make you happy?"

Minako faltered. She was having trouble dividing her attention between his voice and the painful images in her head.

"Look," said Tohru. "Hell if I'm gonna stop you, I hate this kid. I hate his dumbass guts. I think the world'd be better off if you did kill him. Fewer messy idiots who wanna be fucking heroes is exactly how I want my world."

Abruptly, Tohru released Minako's arms. Startled, she froze for a moment, staring across at Yosuke, who was also very still, with Susano-o poised in front of him, waiting for the next blow.

"No," she murmured, as the haze started clearing away from her eyes, and for the first time she started to feel the aching in her limbs and the collection of choking tears that was making its way up the back of her throat. "He is a hero. That's not stupid at all. You're wrong."

Tohru sighed. "Oh, good," he muttered. "Looks like you're still there after all. Jeez…well, it was fun while it lasted."

Suddenly, Minako was aware of how closely she was clutching her naginata, holding in a knuckle-whitening death grip as it stood between her and Yosuke's half-hearted assaults. She stared down at it in horror, and then dropped it to the floor, where it clanged and lay still, gleaming up at her.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

Footsteps strolled through the Velvet Room door, then stopped stock-still as whoever it was apparently took in the carnage.

"What…Yosuke? What's happening?" asked Yu, sounding shaken and shocked.

Minako felt dizzy. She'd been using her persona too much and for too long, she realized. She'd completely exhausted her energy stores. As she sank down to her knees on the ground, she called out, repeating the last word she'd heard in some sort of last ditch attempt to express something that she wasn't finished feeling yet. "Yosuke?"

Then, the world went black.


	29. Armageddon: Chapter Five

**Author's Note: **I will…I will finish this story tonight. Oh god, I have such a horrible headache…I think my brain is staging an active protest, although I'm not sure quite against what. They did say that this would happen if I kept drinking too much coffee…

Let's just try to get this over with before I lose the ability to focus on what's in front of me.

**Chapter Five**

When Minako opened her eyes again, she was still in the Velvet Room. She was still, in fact, lying on the Velvet Room floor, which was uncomfortably cold and rigid against her aching back.

"Oh," she murmured, as reality, giving her no respite whatsoever, came flooding back through her brain."Oh…no."

"Oh yeah," agreed Junpei. Minako glanced over to see that he was sitting propped up against the wall only a few inches from where she lay. "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Wow. Tell you what, though, life as your friend…it's never boring."

"Junpei," murmured Minako. "You're okay? You're not hurt?"

Junpei shook his head. "Been okay the whole time," he assured her. "Yep, not a scratch on me…okay, that's a lie, my face hurts like a mother fucker, but you can't really fault the guy too much…I mean, maybe it was weeks ago, but I kinda did throw the first punch. Still, kinda embarrassing that I went down that easily, you know? Oh well., Maybe I need that training more than I thought I did…uh, another day, though. We can start tomorrow. Maybe."

It took Minako a moment to remember exactly what punch Junpei was talking about. "Yosuke," she muttered miserably. "Please, please tell me I didn't…"

"Nope, but you tried," said Junpei. "And man, I wasn't wrong about you, you're a machine in battle…just knocking out those attacks one after another…isn't that what I said? That you're no lightweight?"

Minako didn't say anything. She just blinked down in horror at the blue patterns on the floor.

"That nightmare again, right?" asked Junpei, lowering his voice a little, and dropping some of his usual jaunty bravado. "That what it was?"

Minako nodded. "Every time I close my eyes, these days," she admitted. "And that's…that's not very often. It's hard to sleep…to think straight." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Junpei shrugged. "What are you sorry for? Don't gotta say sorry to me. Like I'm gonna judge you. Nice to know that if it had all been real, you would have had my back. Hey, maybe I'll need that someday, but God, I hope not." He clapped her on the shoulder, and gave it a comforting squeeze. "But it was all in your head, okay? It's over now. Like it never happened…cause it didn't. Got it?"

Minako sighed. "No," she said. "No, it wasn't all in my head. Not all of it." Now she could very easily picture the horrified look on Yosuke's face as she'd sent sequential assaults blazing after him, her persona rearing up in her memory and looming in for the kill. Minako loved Messiah, had always loved and felt deeply akin to Messiah in a way that was very slightly different and more powerful from even the deep way she'd connected with the rest of her personas. At the moment, though, she hated thinking about it. Somehow, through her, it had betrayed her in her hour of direst need.

"I don't know what I'm gonna say to Yosuke," she mumbled, really thinking out loud more than expecting any response from Junpei.

"Well, you sort of started already," Junpei informed her. "I think maybe something like 'seriously, I just went crazy and that was really not part of the plan, sorry?' might be a good follow up, but you're the people person, not me."

"I…wait, what?" Minako blinked. Junpei was looking at something just past her shoulder, and with a growing sense of dread, she followed his gaze to see Yosuke, also lying on his back and staring at the ceiling several feet to her left.

"Y-Yosuke," she stammered. "Are you hurt?" That seemed to Minako like the incredibly stupid question that it probably was, but it was all she had in her usually ample social arsenal in light of confusing and unexpected recent events.

Yosuke didn't get up. "Yeah," he said. "Ow. Seriously. Pretty sure I picked the wrong fight, this time…ugh, and Naoto had to see it, too. That's…that's not how I would have wanted it to play out. Wonder what she thinks of me now...not so cool, right? Figures."

Something about the way he was talking to her didn't make sense to Minako, and she frowned. "I'm sorry," she informed him carefully.

Yosuke sighed. "Nah, it's cool," he told her

Minako's mouth fell open. "What?" she demanded. "I thought you hated me. And I just tried to kill you!" The world, again, had stopped making any sense. At least, thought Minako, that was something that she was accustomed to, sort of.

"You didn't try to kill me, exactly," Yosuke corrected her. "It was uh…a side effect, yeah. Of you being really, really pissed off." He turned his head and for a moment, their eyes met across the horizontal plane of the Velvet Room floor. "I thought I hated you, too. I sort of did hate you."

Even though Minako had said it herself, that still stung a little. "I know," was alls he managed in response.

There was a brief interlude, during which Yosuke chewed on his lip, and rubbed at a place on his arm that Minako could now see was tied up with a bandage.

"Guess I had you wrong," he said eventually.

Minako didn't know what to say.

"Guess I thought you didn't believe in having your buddy's back," he went on. "That you couldn't put your friends first. That's not it, though, is it? I mean…I don't think I'd be in all this pain if you couldn't do that, so…"

Minako opened her mouth to apologize again, but closed it without speaking. Apologies weren't going to cut it, no matter how many times she found new ways to phrase them. Finally, she said, "Junpei told you about the dream, didn't he?"

Yosuke nodded. "Yeah. You're pretty messed up, you know that?"

Minako couldn't argue with that.

"Maybe I wanted you to put me first," Yosuke muttered. "But, hey, that's different. Not everybody can be your partner, and you've already got one. Made that pretty clear. I guess I was angry about a lot of things. Thought I was angry about something totally different, about Adachi, but that was just part of it."

"I'm in love with him," said Minako, before she'd even realized that the words were coming out of her mouth.

Yosuke flinched. "Yeah, I still hate that," he growled. "That's…that's fucking insane. I can't…do we have to talk about that? I'm trying to mend a bridge here, give me a break."

Mending a bridge, thought Minako, was probably not something that Yosuke had decided to do on his own. She remembered suddenly how Yu had arrived in the Velvet Room just as she was losing consciousness, and was instantly certain that he and Yosuke had been engaged in a lot of intense conversation before she'd managed to wake up.

Minako shook her head. "So," she asked him, "we're…not partners anymore? That can't happen, now, can it?"

"No…uh, I don't think so," mumbled Yosuke. "Doesn't…doesn't seem like that'd work. I don't hate you, though. Gonna have to work with that, for now. Oh, and…I'm sorry about what I said, about wishing I'd let you die. I guess I'm glad you're not dead."

Minako suddenly felt as though she might start to cry, again. It wasn't a happy feeling or a sad feeling, it was just an upswell of so many feelings that they weren't sure how to present themselves any other way. "I'm glad you're not dead too," she told him.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. Well that's…that's good, right?"

**Fin. **


	30. The Confession: Chapter One

**Twelfth Story: The Confession**

**Summary: **The hard part is already over. Now all Minako has to do is report her success….that is, if Adachi is still willing to listen to what she has to say. WARNING: Complete Minako x Adachi fluff. Enter at your own risk.

**Character Focus: **Minako, Adachi.

**Chapter One**

It was a long time before Minako felt strong enough to try and move on. Every reserve she had of both physical and emotional strength felt like it had been completely sapped.

"We should go home," said Junpei, when Minako finally peeled herself off of the floor and wobbled to her feet. "You're beat."

Minako shook her head. "I'll go soon. I just…there's something else."

Junpei rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated little breath. "Seriously? Now? You're gonna go chasing after that guy now? Hasn't he caused you enough trouble?"

"Probably," agreed Minako. "But that's not the point, is it?"

Junpei muttered something darkly to himself. "Jeez, maybe I shoulda just let Yosuke rough him up, before. Woulda saved you a lot of trouble in the long run, I guess. Me, too."

Minako blinked at him in surprise. "You should have what?"

"Aw, nothing, forget it." Junpei shook his head. "Just go, get it over with. I'm not gonna wait up for you this time, though. I'm tired, I'm heading out."

Minako smiled. As she walked out of the Velvet Room and into the open TV world, she heard Junpei call something after her.

"And don't take too long!" he shouted. "I've had enough of this place for one day. No, for a week!"

"I thought you weren't going to wait up for me," Minako reminded him.

Junpei waved a hand dismissively at her. "Whatever, make it quick and maybe I won't leave. Least I can do for the crazy girl who thought she was saving my life, right?"

She heard him sigh as he sat back down against the wall, and something inside her lightened, just a bit. Then she stopped for a moment to get her bearings and, after glancing around for a few moments with a puzzled frown on her face, Minako started in the direction in which she was almost sure she'd find Tohru's twisted sanctum .

She'd only been there once before, or at least only once that she could remember. She sometimes had a hard time keeping track of the places that she'd gone when she'd been blind. There were cues, sounds, and signals that she'd recognize, but if those cues and signs weren't there from one day to another, she'd never had known that she was in the same place, at all. It was possible that she'd gone through Tohru's place before, only for some reason, the voices had been silent that day. It was hard to be certain, so she didn't bother dwelling on it much.

Although it did take her a little longer than she'd hoped, instinctively following her eyes instead of her ears, Minako did eventually find the place. It wasn't exactly what she'd expected when she'd imagined what it would look like, either. It was dark, but not drab, full of reds, yellows, browns and blacks, with some sort of indestructible nauseatingly bright yellow caution tape pasted into strange shapes at unexpected angles.

Tohru was standing in the center of one of those caution tape triangles, lounging against an angrily colored wall and staring at his feet with a brooding look on his face. All around them both, Minako could hear the voices echoing, screaming things that Tohru would never be able to put out of his mind.

"You said you'd never come back here," she reminded him quietly. "You promised."

Without looking up, Tohru shook his head. "No way," he muttered. "I don't make promises. Can't be bothered, it's a pain in the ass. Wouldn't keep them anyway."

"Well," reasoned Minako, "you should have made this one, and kept it. It was for your own good, anyway."

Tohru snorted. "Like I've never heard that before."

Minako contemplated for a moment whether she should duck under or try to step over the caution tape. When she looked up again, Tohru was watching her, with one eyebrow raised.

"What?" he asked.

"Thank you," she told him. "For what you said just then. When I was…when I was trying to fight Yosuke."

Tohru shrugged. "Told you I thought you should kill him," he said. "Not something you usually thank somebody for."

"No," insisted Minako, shaking her head,. "I'm not thanking you for that. I'm thanking you for telling me that it wouldn't make me happy."

Adachi laughed his mirthless little laugh. "Again, probably could have figured that one out of yourself, if you'd been thinking clearly. Or at all. Thinking clearly might have been a big step for you, actually. Oh well."

Minako decided to duck under the tape. As she advanced on Tohru, she was rewarded by watching him flinch and recoil ever so slightly from her.

"It's not that, either," she repeated. "It's that you knew it wouldn't make me happy. You told me. That's the answer to my question. You do care if I'm happy or not, don't you?"

"This again," snarled Adachi, rolling his eyes. "Didn't we finish this one up the other day, when you barged in and started asking me shit like-!"

"I told Yosuke," interrupted Minako.

That got Tohru's full attention, Minako noted. He tried not to show it, but he was suddenly listening very, very carefully. As she watched, one of his hands clenched into a fist at his side, before he relaxed it and crossed one leg over the other, like he was trying extra hard to look casual and not to give himself away. Minako saw him swallow nervously.

"Yeah? Told him what?" he asked.

Minako let a beat go by before she answered him. She was hoping to wait until she forced him to meet her gaze, but Tohru was better at playing the nonchalant, disinterested game than she would ever be.

"I told him that I'm in love with you," she said finally.


	31. The Confession: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

Tohru's body gave a convulsive jerk, and he was suddenly standing up much straighter, staring at her out of disbelieving eyes. For just a second there was a flicker of hope in those eyes, and Minako had to stifle the urge to go to him immediately.

"No way," he breathed, running one hand nervously through his hair, his fingers twitching. "No, because…you said you were sorry."

Minako wasn't sure what he was talking about. "I said…what?" she asked.

"That one time," insisted Tohru hastily. "When you came in here saying some shit about me wanting you to be happy, you…you said you were sorry, like you couldn't…you didn't have what I wanted. I thought…uh, well, isn't that what I was supposed to think? Weren't you letting me go? I told you to leave, and you-!"

"And I left," finished Minako. "It was too hard for me to watch. I knew I was hurting you. I was sorry that I was hurting you."

Tohru was just staring at her, his mouth partly open as though he was halfway through a though that never made it into words. Minako waited for a moment, then shrugged, trying not to be too disappointed. Her face felt hot as she turned around and ducked back under the caution tape, prepared to go back to where she hoped she'd still find Junpei waiting to walk her home.

Tohru's' hand shot out abruptly and closed on her wrist, pinning her there. "Where the hell are you going?" he asked.

Minako shrugged. "Home," she said. "I'm tired, and it's been a very long day. I said what I came here to say, didn't I? If you've decided that you don't feel the same way anymore, then I-!"

Tohru exhaled sharply, shaking his head. "The hell…" he muttered. Then he stepped over the tape with one quick stride and caught her against him with one arm while he pressed the fingers of the other hand to her face, and closed in for the kiss. Minako shut her eyes and relaxed in the warmth of that moment just briefly, before disentangling her lips from his long enough to get a few words in.

"Tohru?" she asked.,

"What?" he mumbled.

He tried to kiss her again, but she pushed away from him, crossing her arms over her chest and watching the suddenly uncertain look in his eyes.

"Don't you have something for me, too?" she asked him. "It's not fair any other way."

Tohru swallowed anxiously again, and Minako was partially delighted and partially alarmed to see his face suddenly flush darker in his awkward discomfiture.

"L-love you," he muttered desperately.

Minako raised an eyebrow. "Sorry?" she asked.

Tohru took a deep breath, then shook his head and twined his fingers into her hair, resting his forehead against hers. "I…I love you," he stammered into her hair. "I love you. I love you. I…whoa, I have not said that in a really long time. It feels pretty fucked up, uh, in a good way, maybe. That doesn't make any sense, um…crap." He gritted his teeth, looking frustrated.

Minako felt like giggling. It was a very good thing, she decided, that she managed to contain it. It seemed so amazing and a little disturbing how completely different he was now than he had been only moments before. She'd never really be able to get used to that, even if she was peripherally aware of just how dichotomous the two sides of Tohru would always be. He was somehow a malicious, snarky pain in the ass and a fourteen year old lovesick schoolboy at the same time…not, she reflected, that those two things were really all that different, in the end.

"I should go," she informed him.

He looked instantly panicked. "Wait," he said, "why? What did I do wrong? You didn't like it? Jeez, I don't how else to say it…"

"Didn't like what?" asked Minako.

"You know," mumbled Adachi. "What I said. Aw man, I should be better at this, it's not like I've never been with a girl before, or anything…uh, whoa, that was definitely the wrong thing to say there. Yup, that was bad. Gah."

He made as if to turn back towards the wall, but Minako linked her fingers through his and drew him back to her.

"I liked it," she promised him. "Really. It's just that I'm tired, and Junpei's waiting for me."

His eyes narrowed at the mention of Junpei. "Who the fuck cares?" he muttered. "So make him wait. What the hell is up with you and Junpei anyway?"

Once upon a time, Minako would have gotten angry about that. Now, though, things were different. She'd gotten that question so many times from so many different people, both friends and ex-boyfriends that she was more than a little used to coming up with an answer.

"We're not together," she informed Tohru simply. "We never have been and we never will be. But I'm keeping him waiting and that's rude. Besides, if I don't show up soon he'll probably come after both of us with a sword."

"Cute," growled Tohru.

"Don't be jealous," cautioned Minako.

He snorted. "I'm gonna be jealous as hell," he informed her. "You run around with horny guys all the time…and you're my girl, now. So…there it is." He bit his lip, looking wary again. "I mean, it's insane, and fucked up, and you're probably a masochist, but…you're mine and I'm sure as hell not giving that up without a fight. So…"

Minako leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth. He tried to catch her for another real kiss, but she evaded him.

"Goodnight, Tohru," she said.

"Fuck," he mumbled. "Curfew. Velvet Room. Fuck it all."

Again, she forced herself not to laugh. "I'll come back tomorrow. I promise. I just need some sleep, please."

As she passed back towards the way out of Tohru's mind, the voices continued to taunt and tease her. She recognized most of them now, from the time that Tohru had dragged her here to try and make a point about who he really was. There was Dojima-san's voice, and the voice of Tohru's former boss, and then the voice of his mother and the horrible playground children.

There was another voice, too, a cold, feminine voice that Minako recognized now as that of Hinata, Tohru's former fiancée.

"I'll be fine," she was saying, "and you have work to do." Then came the sound of a door slamming, and then a younger, softer Tohru muttered the same words that Minako had heard come out of his older counterpart's lips only moments before she walked away.

"I love you too…" said the younger Tohru, as Minako listened to what was presumably the sound of Hinata's car driving off.

Minako turned around to see Tohru still standing there, watching her.

"I love you," she told him.

"Yeah," he whispered, looking a little relieved. "Yeah. You too."

**Fin. **


	32. Team

**Thirteenth Story: Team**

**Summary: **Junpei gives a lecture to somebody he thought he was just starting to respect. There's an extent to which they really all are on the same team, even if he's the only one that's figured that out yet. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Junpei, Naoto.

The day after all that insane crap had gone down in the Velvet Room, and Minako had nearly solved all of their problems, sort of, by killing Yosuke, Junpei went for a walk. It was already pretty late in the day by the time he left, and he had to call in to Daidara's to make up some excuse about being sick and not being able to pull himself out of bed for work. It wasn't the kind of thing he normally did. Sure, Junpei didn't exactly have the most enviable work ethic in all of Inaba, or anything, but he generally showed up and did his job the same as any other guy, mostly because working for Daidara helped him keep from being hungry, and because it wasn't a hard enough job that he couldn't zone out and daydream about the stuff he really wanted to be doing most of the time.

Today, though, he didn't have it in him. The worst was over, the crisis had been averted, and he, Junpei Iori, had kind of been a hero in a little way, which was good enough for a Friday. Right now, what he needed more than anything was a break, and maybe a couple of videogames or a chance to whack at something with his sword until he felt a little more relaxed about the world at large.

Having told Old Man Daidara that he was feeling like shit, Junpei knew that he probably shouldn't wander through more populated parts of town, but he went over to Junes anyway. He was hungry, the fridge was empty, and besides, if Junpei wasn't in the shop, then Daidara would have to stick to lurking around behind the desk and probably wouldn't make it out to see him, anyway.

One person who did see him, though, was Naoto Shirogane. She was sitting in the food court, reading the newspaper, or something like that, and when Junpei walked by, she looked up quickly and then instantly looked away again, like she was trying to pretend their eyes hadn't met. Junpei wasn't fooled. He wasn't much of a fan of the way people took stuff out in public to read, anyway. If she was sitting out in the middle of a public place, he reasoned with himself, then she was gonna have to deal with some social stuff.

"Hey," he said, grabbing a chair and pulling it up next to Naoto's table.

Naoto eyed him coldly. "Good afternoon," she murmured, in a way that made it very clear, even to blunt and socially inept Junpei that she wasn't in the mood for conversation. He soldiered on anyway.

"Nice job yesterday," he told her. "I mean, hey, you were a huge help. You kinda saved the day, huh? Thanks. Dunno what I would have done if you weren't there. Coulda gotten pretty ugly."

Naoto dropped her paper on to the table, and gave him a withering look. "It seems strange, does it not, that you should be thanking me for standing up against an ally of yours? There is something perverse about it…much like the rest of what went on in the Velvet Room during yesterday's fiasco."

"Hey, here's an idea. How about you say something like, uh, 'you're welcome?'" suggested Junpei.

Naoto shook her head and pursed her lips. "As I have just made very clear, there is nothing whatsoever for you to be thanking me for. Although there may have been some discussion between us as to the correct and best advised course of action, it is not as though we have joined forces towards a common goal. Your leader assaulted my leader. My leader was forced to defend himself, and I protected him. Had it not been for the reconciliation facilitated between them by the timely arrival of Yu Narukami, we would still to all intents and purposes be on opposing sides of the board. Now," she added, picking up her newspaper again and pointedly standing it up between them, "if you will excuse me."

Junpei snorted. "I will not excuse you, jeez," he muttered. "Hey, aren't you supposed to be some kind of big-name, hotshot detective? How come you're so damn stupid about this, huh?"

"Stupid?" squeaked Naoto, slamming the paper back down on to the table and glaring at him. "Forgive me for being perhaps overly blunt, but you hardly seem the correct individual to be throwing around offensive terms about my or anyone else's level of intelligence!"

Junpei had to think about that one for a moment. When he parsed it through, he realized that she was calling him an idiot, but it wasn't the first time that had happened, and it probably wouldn't be the last. Even Minako got on his case for making stupid decisions now and then, so it didn't phase him too much anymore. Besides, he was right, and he knew it. That helped.

"You just don't get it," Junpei informed her. "Anyway, not like it's my job to force you to think anything, I'm just saying I think you're pretty cool. You're a good ally to have in a fight, okay? So I'm thanking you. There. Done. We good?"

Naoto was biting her lip, shaking her head more to herself than in response to anything Junpei had said. "Your logic puzzles me," she admitted. "We have pitted our strength against each other, stood facing each other on the field of combat, and yet you call us allies. I don't…"

"No," agreed Junpei, "you definitely don't, huh? Hey, I don't get you. First you go talking yesterday, all about how alliance is important to you, and you 'treasure' the way we all work together, and that stuff…and now this. What's up with that? What do you think we're even trying to do, here? You wanna mend some bridges? So do I. I've had enough of this fighting and picking on each other, it's a pain in the ass and it's getting on my case. You started to stop it, that's a good thing."

"I raised my hand against your leader," Naoto reminded him. "At your request, by the way...does that not sting a bit, when you think about it? That you willed me to stand against the woman who is, essentially, your partner in all of this?"

Junpei shook his head. "Sting? Uh, nope, not even a little bit."

Naoto stared at him in some surprise. Junpei sighed.

"Look," he said. "You think she really wanted to kill him? That crazy Adachi guy was right, it never would have made her happy…wouldn't have made anybody happy. She panicked, she freaked out, that's all that was. That's why we have buddies, okay? So they can get in the way and tell us to shut up and fuck off when it turns out that we're about to do something we're gonna regret. That's what it is, that's what's important, I guess. That's what those precious "alliances" are that you were droning on about are, right? So? You stopped her from doing something that was gonna make her miserable, and you helped me do it, too. You got in the way and you stopped both of us from making a mess of this whole thing, even if that looked like what we were trying to do. So, thanks. Thanks for being on our team. That's all I got, okay?"

There wasn't really anything else to say, so Junpei stood up and left the table, muttering to himself under his breath about how some people just didn't get it, any of it.

Just as he was about to open the gate and make tracks back to his house, however, he heard Naoto say something at his back.

"You're welcome," she murmured, just loud enough that Junpei could catch it. "And also, thank you. At least, I think so."


	33. Mend

**Fourteenth Story: Mend**

**Summary: **Yosuke had been hoping for a reprieve when Yu showed up. It was pretty clear that Yu wasn't going to be happy, but partners were supposed to stick by each other. Turns out he wasn't the only one who needed the backup. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Yu, Yosuke.

While Minako lay passed out on the floor, and Junpei leaned over her, arguing with Igor, Naoto, Yu, and Yosuke found themselves a quiet corner of the room in which to compare notes.

"From the beginning," instructed Yu quietly, obviously undecided as to whether or not he should be pissed off, confused, worried, or a combination of all there. "Naoto, please. What's going on, here?"

"Huh?" Yosuke, whose arm was aching a little from the one blow he hadn't managed to block or dodge, frowned. "Why her? I'm the one with the injury, I'm the one who-!"

Yu raised an eyebrow at him, and Yosuke, plenty used to that dubious look, fell instantly silent. "Naoto's better at explaining things," Yu informed him simply.

Yosuke couldn't argue with that. It was true.

Naoto didn't look much happier about it than Yosuke did, but she nodded, took a slow, calming breath, and then began. "I am afraid that I am only familiar with certain parts of the story," she said. "I entered the Velvet Room perhaps twenty minutes ago, perhaps fewer, to find Yosuke-senpai and Junpei-san engaged in a heated argument, which resulted, it seems, in the exchange of blows."

"Blows?" asked Yu, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean? He hit you, Yosuke?"

Yosuke had the uncomfortable impression that he was back on the playground in elementary school, being interrogated by that one kind but firm teacher who every little kid hated to love. Come to think of it, he got the same feeling when talking to Nanako, a lot. They really did have a lot in common in that family.

"No, not quite," murmured Naoto. "It appears that Yosuke-senpai was engaged in a sort of combat with Adachi-san, before Junpei-san attempted an intervention…to which Yosuke-senpai responded with blows. I attempted to speak up on Junpei-san's behalf, but the opportunity was lost, for Minako came upon the scene and…apparently misinterpreted the proceedings in a manner that I am as of yet unable to completely understand."

Yosuke knew it was coming before it happened. He was a man, he had to own up to this. He wasn't ashamed of it, not for a second, and so he forced himself to meet Yu's eyes as Yu gave him the distinctly disappointed look that the whole Dojima clan seemed to have in constant supply. Then, he reached out and grabbed Yosuke by the arm, dragging him away from Naoto and towards the door that led back into the TV world.

"Hey, yikes!" protested Yosuke. "What's with the-!"

"Come on," grumbled Yu, pulling the door open. Naoto, much to Yosuke's distress, didn't follow them.

Out in the TV world, they were alone, which was kind of a relief. "Look, man," began Yosuke. "I'm not sorry about it, so don't start. She came after me! She's the crazy one here, all I did was-!"

"Shut up," muttered Yu.

Yosuke's mouth fell open. "Wha…what did you say to me?"

"I told you to shut up," clarified Yu, sighing. "What the hell were you thinking, Yosuke? I figured you had this under control, I wasn't expecting you to freak out and lose your cool like this, this is…I mean, and it's embarrassing."

Yosuke wasn't sure what to say to that Yu Narukami was the last person in the world that Yosuke had ever expected to take Minako's side. It hurt in a way that nothing else really did, like his last bastion of support had just given out on him and he was really, genuinely alone in this thing for the very first time.

"Whatever," he mumbled. "Wow, this is…kind of unexpected. Hey, I thought we were partners. I figured you'd have my back."

Yu took a deep breath. "Don't be an idiot," he muttered. "Of course I have your back. Why else would I show up like this in the middle of the school week?"

"We're supposed to be partners" Yosuke went on, shaking his head. "Everything's messed up, here. I needed you to-!"

"I needed you to have _my_ back," announced Yu, grabbing Yosuke by the shoulders. "I was counting on you! Wasn't that obvious? Partners, yeah, we are. That means we're equals, right? We're on the same page? I needed you to hold down the fort while I was gone, that's what I was counting on you, for. Now we've got this, instead."

Yosuke shook his head belligerently. "You're the damn leader," he reminded Yu. "Everybody looks up to you, everybody expects you to keep it together, that's what-!"

"Yeah, that's what the leader does," agreed Yu, cutting him off. "What, did you fall asleep or something all those months ago, when we agreed that you were the new leader? You're the guy, now, okay? You're that guy, the one who has to have his shit together and keep everybody else in line. They've spent years following you, figuring out what you need, listening to your orders."

"I give crappy orders," muttered Yosuke.

Yu raised an eyebrow. "Well, you sure did this time," he agreed. That didn't make Yosuke feel any better.

They stood across from each other in silence for a moment, while Yu frowned, apparently trying to sort something out behind his eyes. Yosuke stared at the floor, wondering if he was angrier or more disappointed at the moment. Or guilty. Yeah, there was a lot of guilt there, too.

"Look," said Yu finally, with a little less frustration in his tone. "I know how angry you are. I know what it all means to you. You're not wrong, Yosuke. It's never wrong to feel something about another person, right? That can't be, not when it's not something we can control. But listen, I don't care if you never want to talk to her or look at her again, that's fine with me. You're a grown guy, it's your decision, who cares? You need to make a decision, though. You need to figure your stuff out, because there are other people counting on you and looking to you to figure out how they're supposed to feel. That's what leadership is. You're my partner, right? You really want to be partners in this?"

Yosuke nodded. "Course," he said. "That's…I mean, that's the way it's always been, right? You and me, versus the world." That was the last of what still made sense in Yosuke's head.

"Then if we're gonna be partners in this, I need you to be part of a leader for me," said Yu quietly. "Stop making trouble, stop acting like a pissed off little kid, and start putting this mess back together, because at some point we are gonna want to have something to come home to, and it took a lot for us to turn this place into a home to begin with. We started this partnership to make the world a better place, right? So let's not give up on it now."

Yosuke bit his lip. "Sorry, man," he muttered. "I'm just…I can't do it. I'm a bad leader, I always have been. I haven't got whatever it…whatever you have, it's just not part of me. Nothing I can do about that, it's the way it is."

Yu's hand came down on Yosuke's shoulder in a clap of encouragement. "No," he said, "No, I'm the bad leader. "I've been distracted, I haven't been paying attention. There's…no excuse for that, I guess. Sorry. I should have stuck around, should have checked in more often. Maybe I knew this wasn't going to clear itself up if we ignored it, but…I'm tired." He laughed. "I can't say that to anybody else, but I'm tired. You're probably tired too, huh?"

For some reason, Yosuke didn't want to agree to that. There was a built-in part of him that saw Yu sagging under the weight of whatever, and was instantly prepared to tell them it was cool, that Yosuke had it all under control, that it was gonna be fine and Yu should just go take a break and finish up with school, like nothing had happened to get in the way.

"Partners, right?" asked Yu.

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke, nodding.

"Okay." Yu sighed. "So, two shitty leaders, huh? Maybe we can partner up and be one better leader. What do you say?"

Yosuke rallied himself to give Yu a manly little punch on the arm. He regretted it moments later, when Yu returned the gesture on Yosuke's injured arm.

"Agh," grunted Yosuke,.

Yu's eyes widened. "Oh, no, hey, uh…are you okay? Wait, here." Yu rummaged in his pocket, and pulled out a bandage that looked really familiar to Yosuke, like the kind that he'd used to carry around himself back in high school.

"Hey," said Yosuke. "I gave you that, right? After our first fight. Seriously, you still have that thing? Have you used it? That's..that's pretty gross."

"Shut up and put it on," instructed Yu. "Then we have to figure out what to do about the rest of them. You probably shouldn't go in there and face Junpei alone, he's got a real temper and if he hits you again, I'm not gonna stop you from showing him what a bad idea that was. Don't tell anybody I said that, though."

They walked back towards the door, and just as they were on the threshold, Yosuke glanced over at his friend.

"What about Minako?" he asked.

Yu shrugged. "I wasn't there. That one's up to you. Don't beat her up, that won't solve anything, okay? But the rest's not for me to decide. It's your fight."

"But you'll have my back," Yosuke reminded him. "Hey, I wonder which of you would win in a fight. Okay, she's pretty powerful, but you used to be a wild card too, right? You're kind of a big deal, so maybe…"

"Obviously I have your back," said Yu. "Let's…try not to have it come to that, though, okay?"

They crossed back into the Velvet Room together.

**Fin. **


	34. Casanova: Chapter One

**Author's Note: **This one was so difficult to write! Ugh, Adachi, why must you torment me and make it so hard to write about you? Ugh, talk about masochism…anyway, I'm out. Tomorrow, Dojima, Yu, Naoto, and all the rest of the good stuff. Phew.

**Fifteenth Story: Casanova**

**Summary: **Selfish, insecure Tohru Adachi is not exactly the world's greatest lover, not by a long shot. There are demons between him and Minako that can't be so easily exercised. Still, love is a patient creature. WARNING: Sexual content, read at your own risk.

**Character Focus: **Minako, Adachi.

**Chapter One**

Exactly like she'd promised, Minako hurried back to the Velvet Room the day after her ill advised showdown with Yosuke. Igor was there, of course, looking even more beleaguered and long-suffering than usual, probably because of the way Tohru shot out of his chair the moment he heard the door open. Minako smiled. Poor Tohru had probably been on edge all night, which would be enough to make him chatty and difficult, and to fray pretty easily at even steady, unflappable Igor's nerves.

"Hi there," said Tohru. He made as if to reach for her, but Minako shook her head very slightly, and he stopped, frowning in confusion. She shot a significant glance at Igor. Igor did not quite roll his eyes, but there was something almost like exasperation in his usually so unreadable face.

"I'd like to take him out for a little while," Minako told Igor. "If that's all right. I promise I won't lose him, or let him do anything wrong."

Tohru looked disappointed. "Wait, really? Um…define 'wrong' for me. Because, I mean, you're what, seventeen? So, uh, depending on how you look at it…"

Minako ignored him. "I know Nanako's not here," she told Igor. "I'll have to vouch for him in her absence. I think she'd be all right with that."

Igor gave Tohru a long, tired look.

"Master," mumbled Tohru miserably, throwing a quick look at Minako as though hoping she hadn't heard that part. "Come on, cut a guy a break…"

Waving one hand dismissively at both of them, Igor turned around in his chair. "Very well, the responsibility is yours. Just…please, take him out of here," he instructed Minako.

Minako took Tohru by the hand, and led him back into the TV world.

Tohru had to help her find the exit that would bring them both back through the TV in her living room. Almost the moment their feet touched down on the living room carpet, Tohru pulled Minako into his arms and was kissing her greedily, his hands pressed hard against the bare place where sweater met skirt at her lower back. They stumbled together back against the nearest wall, and as his tongue pushed insistently into her mouth she reached up and wrapped both arms around his neck, her fingers brushing against tendrils of hair that were getting a little too long in light of a recent lack of personal grooming.

He released her lips for a moment and laughed under his breath. "Don't do that," he muttered. "Tickles. Not fair."

"You need a haircut," she informed him, dutifully changing her grip to keep out of tickling range. He started kissing her again, and for a moment, she closed her eyes and just enjoyed how good that felt, especially after she'd been trying not to daydream about it for weeks. Then she reached up and began loosening his ever-present tie.

She felt his hands suddenly tighten convulsively on her waist as she removed the tie. He inhaled sharply against her lips, and then abruptly released her and pulled away, shaking his head a little breathlessly. "Wh-whoa, hey, hang on a second, uh…"

Minako raised an eyebrow in surprise. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he assured her quickly, grinning nervously and running an uncomfortable hand through his hair. "There is definitely nothing wrong right now...nope. Not a thing. It's just that, um…" he faltered and bit his lip, apparently at a loss.

Minako had a feeling that she knew what this was. This wouldn't be the first time, of course, that they'd…well, been intimate with each other, but she distinctly remembered something similar happening between her and Shinjiro when she'd first come back from the Seal. Shinjiro had been reluctant to be with her as well. "No, its okay," she promised him. "I understand. You want to take things slower, now? You know, so that we can savor the relationship?"

Tohru's eyes almost bulged out of his head. "What the hell? No, uh, see, that's…that's definitely not my style. Kinda late, anyway, for taking it slow, don't you think?"

Minako couldn't really argue with that. Now, however, she was out of her depth. "Then what's the problem?"

"Uh…" if anything, Tohru looked even more miserable now than he had when she'd found him in the Velvet Room. There were beads of sweat collecting on his forehead as he looked at anything that wasn't Minako. "Well, I guess it's a little different now, than it was before," he managed eventually. "You know what I mean?"

"No," admitted Minako. "I have no idea what you mean." She didn't know, she thought, unless it had something to do with what they'd said to each other the day before, in the TV world. It made a difference to her, she had to admit, but somehow she couldn't quite see that making a huge difference to Tohru, who was pretty obviously ready to have her right here and now, if it weren't for these uncharacteristic and mysterious misgivings.

"Jeez," mumbled Tohru. "Wow this is embarrassing, uh…look. Before, you were blind. You know, it's not like you were looking at me while we…uh, while we did it. Now you're not. You can see, and that's great! Probably will make some stuff a little less complicated to pull off, granted, but uh…you know, it's not like I'm a real Casanova or anything, right? I mean, pressure's on, now."

Minako blinked at him. "You're…you're uncomfortable with my seeing you?"

Tohru didn't answer that directly. Instead, he asked another question. "Hey, is it true that you used to sleep with a professional boxer?"

"Where," asked Minako, starting to get a little annoyed, "did you hear that? And why does it matter? Yes, Akihiko is a professional boxer, and I really prefer the term 'date' rather than 'sleep with' if that's all the same to you."

"Right, sure," muttered Tohru dismissively, obviously not putting too much serious stock in any of that. "Hell, I bet he had insane muscles. Hey, can I ask you something?"

Minako waited, somewhat impatiently.

"When you first started to see again," continued Tohru, now definitely not even trying to look Minako in the eye, "what'd you think? Of me, I mean. I mean…was it what you expected?"

"You were soaked in blood," remarked Minako dryly. "Remember? So no, I certainly hope it wasn't what I-!"

"Come on, work with me," insisted Tohru. "You probably had some image in your head, I mean…that's how it works, right? That's what you told me, anyway. So, how bad was it, when you saw the real thing?"

Minako gave up. He had, she realized, seriously been worrying about this. She had, of course, seen him twice before; once in the prison, and the second time when he'd killed her attacker at the train station. The second time he'd been covered with blood, too, so she decided not to bring that up. She also decided not to tell him that she was surprised by just how much he was acting like a teenage girl at the moment. It was, quite honestly, kind of endearing, the way he was showing her this particularly awkward vulnerability. It was like the way he ran his hand through his hair when he was nervous. She liked it, mostly because it was a part of him that she hadn't seen until recently, and it helped put together the bigger picture of a person.

"I'm going upstairs," she informed him, walking past him towards the staircase.

Tohru looked uncertain. "Am I coming with you?" he asked.

"Yes," said Minako. "You are."

"Oh," mumbled Tohru. "Okay, well, that's good."


	35. Casanova: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

They climbed the stairs together, and Minako pulled open the door to her bedroom. "I'm getting a TV installed in here, by the way," she told him. She wasn't looking at him, but could still hear the startled little choking noise that came out of him, which gave her just a hint of malicious pleasure that she didn't spend too long bothering to be ashamed of.

Tohru paused on the threshold, and Minako had to take him by the hand and bring him into the room. She sat him down on the bed, then closed the door and perched herself on his lap. For some reason, Tohru laughed under his breath again.

"What?" asked Minako.

He shook his head." You kinda like torturing me, don't you? No, don't lie, you're into that. You get off on it, a little."

Minako felt herself blushing."No, I…" she began uncertainly.

Tohru shrugged. "Nah, forget it. You won't hear me complaining. Much. Maybe you and I aren't so different in the end, huh?"

He grinned at her, and Minako, unsure how to even begin responding to that, opted to stick with her original game plan. She leaned in and kissed him, very slowly, resisting his attempts to pull her back on to the bed. After a moment, she felt his breathing change, and he hoisted her by the waist, shifting her a little farther up on his lap.

"Shit, you…uh, words…mmph," he mumbled incoherently as she began working on the buttons of his shirt. As soon as she had it off, he grabbed the hem of her sweater and tugged it over her head, dropping it carelessly as his fingers sought the hook of her bra.

"Bad at this part," he warned her breathlessly. "Whoever the fuck designed these things, I don't…jeez."

He wasn't wrong about that. His movements were clumsy and way too rushed to get a handle on the little details like a hook and eye, but eventually the thing did come off, and this time he did manage to pull Minako on top of him as he fell back on to the bed. The skin to skin contact was exhilarating, and Minako's heart was beating much faster as she twined her arms around his body and let him roll her over until he had the upper hand. She could feel his pulse pounding through his chest, and she arched her neck as his lips buried themselves in her collarbone.

"M-Minako," he groaned, apparently uncertain where to put his hands, which were now trying their hardest to be everywhere at the same time. He was somehow trying to shove her skirt towards her feet and fumble with the zipper on his pants in the same moment, which was a multi-handed process that there just weren't enough fingers for. Things were moving a little faster now, and Minako tried to kiss him again, but discovered that he'd lost interest in her mouth. When she managed to look into his face, she was alarmed by the hungry, desperate look in his eyes, eyes that were suddenly more the eyes of the killer than they were of the real person she'd been teasing and talking to moments before.

Unwillingly, she remembered the way that Shadow Adachi had looked at her when she and Tohru had confronted him in the Velvet Room. There had been that same hungry anger on his face then when he'd told her, "Do you know what I think about when I look at you? I think about those women I tried to rape, about the looks on their faces. Sometimes I fantasize about what you might look like if I just got the chance to-!"

Tohru grabbed her roughly by the hips and pulled her beneath him. His fingers pushing hard into her skin. It hurt. "Ow," she whispered, "Tohru…" He didn't seem to hear her.

"Tohru," she murmured, unsure if she was reaching him or not. "It's okay, I'm not…I love you."

There was a moment's pause, and then Tohru shuddered, swallowed hard, and laid Minako gently back down on the bed. When she looked into his face this time it was the uncertain face of the man who'd been afraid that she wouldn't like him because he didn't have abs like an athlete. She liked that man much better. Without meaning to, she breathed out a little sigh of relief, and then saw the twist of pain on Tohru's face, and wished she hadn't.

"You're hurting me," she told him, trying not to make it too much of an accusation.

"S-sorry," whispered Tohru, looking like he might be sick. "I…" He brushed his fingers along the place on her hip that was now marked with angry red blotches from the insistent pressure of his fingertips. Turning away from her again, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and started pulling his pants back on as quickly as he could. He didn't even bother with shirt or shoes, but stood up and left the bedroom as soon as he'd finished the zipper. Minako had to find a couple of articles of clothing at least before she was able to follow him.

By the time she caught up with him, he was already standing outside the TV in the living room.

"Wait, Tohru," she insisted.

Tohru just shook his head. "I hurt you," he muttered.

"It wasn't that bad," Minako assured him. "I'm fine."

"Yeah?" He turned on her, looking frantically miserable. "Well, it could have been a lot worse. You said in the Velvet Room that you get what I really am, but you don't get it…I'm a sack of shit, I'm messed up, I…I don't know who the fuck I think I'm kidding," he snarled. "You, apparently…dumbass."

This wasn't, of course, the first time they'd had a conversation like this. Minako had recognized long ago that it was hard for her to combat honesty like that. She couldn't tell him she hadn't been frightened, or that it hadn't been disturbing, because she had been, and it was. Instead, Minako fell back on the old faithful of pragmatism.

"You can't go back there without a shirt," she reminded him. "Igor will give you such a look."

"Heh," muttered Tohru.

Minako waited a beat. "So?" she asked. "Go get it."

"You go get it," grumbled Tohru.

Minako planted both hands on her hips and gave him her very best offended feminine glare. "I don't think so," she informed him coolly. "This is my house and I am not a servant in it. You will get your own damn shirt." She turned around and made a big deal of flouncing back up the stairs. Behind her, she heard Tohru snort a laugh.

A few minutes later he joined her in the bedroom, and sat hesitantly back down on the bed to button his shirt back up.

"You should stay," she told him, watching his back from the other side of the bed.

"No way," retorted Tohru. "The ploy to get me back into the bedroom was cute…maybe even kinda hot, don't get me wrong, but…nah, I don't think I can touch you again right now. Fuck, I mean…but, you wouldn't want me to, right?"

"We'll go downstairs," interrupted Minako. "I'll make tea."

For a moment, he looked as though he was going to shut her down. Then his shoulders sagged, and Minako crawled over the bed to wrap her arms around his back. He sighed.

"Sure, fine, why the hell not," he muttered. "Tea. Yeah."

Minako made as though to get up, but Tohru shook his head. "In a minute," he said. "Just, uh…you know, let's hang out here for a bit."

Minako nodded. "Okay," she agreed.


	36. Casanova: Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

They did eventually wander back into the living room, and Minako dutifully began brewing tea, if only because it was something to occupy her while Tohru sat on the sofa and stared blankly at the wall.

"Where'd my tie end up?" he asked eventually.

Minako retrieved it from where she'd dropped it underneath the TV set. "Why do you even wear this?" she asked, walking over and handing it to him. "You're not a detective anymore, so the suit really is a little much. Besides, don't the Velvet Room attendants usually wear blue?"

"You didn't seriously think I was gonna wear that thing, did you?" asked Tohru, shaking his head. "Hell, maybe I'm no Akihiki, or whatever the fuck his name is, but a guy's gotta have personal standards. Besides, you said it yourself, the tie's a good look for me. 'Snappy dresser,' I think's what you said."

Minako had to think really hard about that one. "You…do know that I said that when I was blind, right?" she asked eventually, suddenly realizing that he was talking about a comment she'd made over a year ago, when she'd first been getting to know him…sort of. "Not that I was wrong," she added hastily, wary of what was beginning to look like an unexpectedly fragile ego. "It just seems a bit strange, that's all. Maybe a change would feel good."

"Yeah, I dunno," he muttered bitterly. "Maybe I have to be a miserable prisoner of that Velvet Room shithole, but I don't have to look like one. It's not in the damn 'contract.'" He waited a moment, then shrugged. "Besides, everything around here's gone to hell…half of it never makes any sense. Gotta stick to something familiar, or we'll all go nuts. Not that we aren't...pretty much there already." He laughed unhappily.

Minako abandoned the tea, and came over to sit down next to him on the sofa, giving him a little kiss on the cheek as she sat down. He smiled, but didn't otherwise move to accommodate her.

"What," she asked teasingly. "No stretch?"

"Huh?" he looked confused.

"You know," insisted Minako, reaching her arms up over her head by way of demonstration. "That thing where you pretend to stretch like you're really tired, just so you can get an arm around me."

"Oh, uh, that." Tohru laughed. "Yeah, uh…I guess I did do that, that one time. Not exactly the smoothest of romantic moves, but you have this way of making me forget all the rules and just panic. Oh, well."

"It was funny," Minako assured him. "Do it again."

Tohru gave her an odd look, but eventually he did stretch his arms out until he had one of them around her shoulders. Minako snuggled closer to him on the sofa.

"Heh, you're a tease," he told her.

"I am not," she protested.

Tohru raised an eyebrow at her. "Yeah, you are," he insisted. "Wasn't the whole point of coming down here to try to cool me down? How am I supposed to do that when you're getting all close and personal, here? Might be asking too much of a guy."

"You're the one who wanted to cool down," Minako reminded him. "I had nothing to do with that. Besides, I don't care. You're going to have to deal with it. We are going to sit on the couch, and you are going to hold me, and the tea is probably going to get cold, and we are going to maybe watch a movie or something. If you don't, I'm going to call Junpei and ask him if he wants to go out to a movie, because at least then I won't be bored, and he's very good company." She added just a little hint of teasing to those last few words, emphasizing the "very" just enough to get Tohru's hackles up. It worked. He gritted his teeth for a moment, and squeezed her a little bit closer to him on the couch.

"You're not going anywhere," he informed her.

Minako pretended to sigh with disappointment. "Oh, dear," she murmured, in her best impression of a damsel in distress. "Whatever shall I do?"

This time, when Tohru laughed, it sounded like he meant it.

**Fin. **


	37. Kingdom Come: Chapter One

**Author's Note: **This is not what I was supposed to be writing this evening. As a matter of fact, I have a Dojima story and a YosukexNaoto story that need to be finished and included in this collection. I started scribbling this one in my notebook on the way home, and I've gotta ask you to bear with me this one time, since I guess this is the product of spontaneous inspiration.

Also, blame **der kapitan. **The incredible, heartbreaking ending of **Twenty Five Hours** did a lot to inspire the basics of this.

**Sixteenth Story: Kingdom Come**

**Summary: **Sometimes, it feels like a fantasy. At other times, it's all too real.

**Character Focus: **Yu, Minako.

**Chapter One**

Minako woke up in the middle of the night, feeling strange and unsettled. She'd been having a nightmare, she knew, and that wasn't at all uncommon. The strange thing was that whatever she'd been dreaming about hadn't felt like one of her nightmares. She couldn't quite put her finger on it or even really remember much of the dream, but something about it had been detached and distant, like watching a movie or seeing a play. There had been none of her in that dream at all.

Getting out of bed, she threw a robe on over her pajamas. The new TV she'd just had installed in her bedroom made this sort of thing a lot easier, and Minako yawned, sniffled, rubbed at one sleepy eye with the back of her hand, and then stepped through the screen and into the TV world.

It was only when she got to the Velvet Room that Minako realized what her sleep deprived mind had decided to overlook. Tohru was lounging in his chair, his arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His eyes were half glazed over, and he was obviously daydreaming. He sat up pretty quickly, however, when he caught sight of Minako out of the corner of his eye.

"Oh, hey," he said. "What, did you miss me so badly you couldn't sleep, or something? Not that I'm complaining." He grinned at her, and Minako suddenly wondered what kind of horrible mess her hair was in. Not that they hadn't seen each other in various states of undress before, but it probably wouldn't have killed her to try a little harder, or at least to wash her face before she'd come in.

"Is there someone in there?" she asked, pointing to the door that led into her nightmare world.

Tohru nodded. "Yep. How'd you know? Actually it's weird, it's like he never comes in here. I was kinda starting to enjoy that…" he sighed. "You know, I think he gets more and more like his self righteous pain in the ass of an uncle every day? How the hell you manage to put up with it I can't figure out…"

"Excuse me," murmured Minako, stepping past him and over to the door.

Tohru grabbed her by the arm. "Wait, whoa! You're going in there by yourself? Uh, does that really seem like a good idea to you? There are shadows, and…hang on, I'll come with you. Not like I have anything better to do."

Minako could see how bored Tohru obviously was, and knew how much he must be aching for a bit of action. She did feel badly about abandoning him to that, but at the same time she wasn't sure that it would be a good idea to bring him into her nightmares and let him listen to the sound of his own laughter echoing around in her dreams. It probably wouldn't make him feel any better about them being lovers, and Minako wasn't awake enough to deal with brooding, nihilistic Tohru just then.

"No, it's okay," she assured him. "Thank you, but, I'll be fine."

Tohru looked surprised, and definitely disappointed. "Um…really? What's so important in there that you can't take me with you, huh? Come on, I'm dying out here, give me a break, I'm-!"

"Sorry, Tohru," whispered Minako. She pulled open the door and stepped over the threshold into the midst of her nightmares.

Except, of course, that these didn't seem to be entirely Minako's nightmares. The room was dark; almost pitch black in exactly the same way that it had been when she and the rest of SEES had gone exploring a few days before. She could hear the sounds of Tohru's crazed laughter and see the places on the wall that were stained with what looked horribly like splatters of blood. There were other images too, though, new ones that didn't belong in Minako's most terrifying dreams. There were oversized shadows that looked like rabbits hopping around, and the sound of a little girl crying for her mom. There was an overturned wheelchair as well, which may or may not have been a new kind of shadow, lying on its back with its wheels spinning crazily in the air.

"Messiah," murmured Minako. Something stirred inside the depths of her soul, and then her persona was standing in front of her, calmly watching as a group of rabbit shadows eyed it warily before bouncing off into the depths.

For some reason, her passage through the nightmare room was much easier than it had ever been before. Minako ascribed that phenomenon to the unexpected and capricious nature of the shadow world itself. It didn't take her too long to reach the twisted little replica of the Tartarus tower, and she wasn't surprised at all to see the figure standing at the top.

"Yu!'" she called, mounting the steps with Messiah floating up behind. Yu turned around and smiled apologetically at her.

"Sorry," he said. "Did I wake you?"

Minako shrugged. "Yes, but…its okay. I guess it's only fair that this is your place now, as much as it is mine."

"Yeah…maybe." Yu was frowning thoughtfully at the door that Minako knew led to her own psychological representation of the Seal. Even in Yu's nightmares, Minako was sure, it would be there. That was something that they shared, that they would always share, like it or not. It was, more than metaphorically, a part of them both.

"Nanako asked me something last night," Yu was saying. "About Aunt Chisato. She wanted to know why her Mom didn't come back to life the same way that I did, and if what we could do to bring her back."

Minako winched. "Oh," she said. "Honestly, though, I'm surprised that she's never asked you that before."

"Yeah," agreed Yu. "Me too. Maybe she was afraid to ask…I'm assuming that she already really knows the answer."

"And what is the answer?" asked Minako. "What did you tell her?"

Yu sighed. "That I don't know why it happened, and that I'm sorry. I mean..that's true, isn't it? It's the closest thing to truth that I can give her, anyway. I said that it doesn't work that way; that death is forever and that nothing we do can really bring someone back."

"But we came back," Minako reminded him.


	38. Kingdom Com: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

"Yeah," said Yu. "I know." He frowned. "Still, it wasn't wrong. I told her the truth. Things like that don't really happen. Not to anyone else, at least. Not to Aunt Chisato, or to Saki Konishi…"

Suddenly, Minako wondered how often Yosuke had considered that very same thing, and if he ever resented Minako for being irrationally alive. He probably did, she realized, and may very well have voiced that much to Yu, who was the sort of person who thought about things very carefully, and took those kind of things deeply to heart. Yosuke would never feel that way about Yu, of course, and neither would Nanako, but…the sentiment was the same, and Yu would get that. Minako couldn't blame Yosuke, or Nanako, or anyone if they did feel that way. In their shoes, she couldn't doubt that she probably would as well. She'd felt that way often about people while watching Shinjiro waste away in the hospital. Why them, and why not him?

"Do you ever feel," Yu asked quietly, "like maybe it isn't real? Like it couldn't be real, because that would be too magical, and too easy?" He shook his head. "Sometimes, I do. I try not to, but…I do. It shouldn't be possible, not even in a world full of shadows and personas, but…it is. Isn't it?"

Minako didn't say anything. She didn't think Yu would have been listening, anyway. He was talking more to himself than to her, with his eyes still fixed on the tower door.

"I want to know what's in there," he told her.

"We know what's in there," Minako reminded him. "We're in there."

"But I want to really know," insisted Yu. "I want to see it. I want to be sure."

Minako nodded. "Me too," she agreed. "Okay. We'll open it together."

For a moment, they both watched the door, neither apparently wanting to be the first person to reach for it. Then Minako wrapped her fingers around the knob, took a deep breath, and pulled.

She had to shield her eyes as the door opened to reveal the swirling, dazzling and ever-changing colors of the Eternity Seal, the seal that was created from detached pieces of both her and Yu's souls.

"It's there," she murmured, even more desperately relieved than she'd expected to be. "Of course it's there, it has to be…"

Then, the voices came. They drifted out of the spinning mass, piling up sound upon sound, one voice on top of another until the air was filled with a cacophony of familiar tones and timbres. Minako, flinching away from the sheer volume of it all, did her best to pick out individual words from the deafening roar.

"As a guest of the Velvet Room," intoned Igor's voice, "you must accept responsibility for your choices. If this mystery is not solved, then your future may be forever lost."

"I can do this," murmured Yukari. "I know I can. I just put it to my head like this, and then I…I pull the trigger."

"No, it's okay," insisted Nanako."I can stay home alone. I'm used to it."

"Hey, don't worry!" said Junpei. "It's cool, I've got your back."

"Just…just try to stay out of trouble, okay?" asked what sounded to Minako like Dojima's best policeman voice.

Minako risked a glance over at Yu, who was now standing rooted to the spot, his mouth slightly open, staring into the swirling abyss.

"Hi," said the voice of Tohru Adachi. "I'm your uncle's gopher. I mean, his partner."

"My dearest," murmured Pharos, or Ryoji, or maybe both.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a gunshot, and Minako shut her eyes involuntarily against the images that rose up in her mind.

"Don't…cry," rasped Shinjiro.

"Big…Bro?" begged Nanako hoarsely. "I'm…scared…"

For a few moments, the voices softened and blended together, to the point where Minako could no longer pick out individual people or phrases.

"You don't get it," muttered Junpei eventually. "You were dead. All that saving the world stuff…it wasn't worth it, anymore. It didn't matter."

"What am I supposed to think?" Dojima was shouting. "Both of my kids are in there fighting these shadow things, and I'm…doing what, exactly? What the hell am I supposed to do, just sit back and watch you let yourselves die?"

"I don't know," mumbled Yosuke. "You're the leader, you've always been the leader. I don't get it, I don't' think I ever made much of a leader."

"Leader," echoed Mitsuru.

"Leader," repeated Yukiko.

"Our leader," said Aigis.

"Leader."

"Leader."

"The leader!"

The voices of their friends and fellow teammates piled in on them, repeating that one word over and over and over again. The word "leader" filled up the whole room, took over every corner and crevice of space that wasn't already full of the memories and visions that Minako was trying desperately to shut out and welcome in at one and the same time. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Yu slowly sinking to his knees on the ground, and she hurried down to him, wrapping her arms around him and doing her best to support him against the onslaught of voices and remembered feelings.

Yu's foot shot out suddenly, and with it he slammed shut the door to the Seal. Instantly, the voices were cut off, the colors faded, and the room was plunged again into blessed, blessed blackness.

Yu and Minako sat on the ground in that welcome silence for a moment, listening to the sound of their own breathing and waiting for the world to spin back around to the reality of the present.

"I'm so tired," muttered Yu desperately. "I'm…I'm exhausted. I'm sorry."

Minako shook her head. "No," she told him getting to her feet and reaching down to off him a hand up. "It's okay to be tired. I'm tired too. We're all so tired, but…but that's a good thing."

Yu took her hand and let her help haul him to his feet. "Why?" he asked.

"Because tired is real," said Minako. "Exhausted is real. Those are real feelings that belong to real people. We're real, Yu, and…and I don't think that we have anything to be ashamed of."

**Fin.**


	39. The Way It Was

**Seventeenth Story: The Way It Was**

**Summary: **All she wanted was to be a family again, whatever that meant.

**Character Focus: **Yu, Nanako, Dojima, Adachi**  
**

"Pow! Bam!" yelled Nanako delightedly, as Icarus surrounded the shadow with a raging ball of flame. "Ooh, that was a shiny one!"

Yu, standing next to her, tried not to smile. It was, in fact, just a little bit creepy, seeing the pleasure that Nanako got out of blowing things up. He had told himself over and over again that she was only ten years old, and therefore far too young to really understand the concept of ending another creature's life. Or maybe, he thought, it was just that she wasn't able to see shadows as creatures, in the same way that he hadn't been before they'd all learned what Teddie really was.

"Boom!" announced Nanako. "Yay, I win!"

The shadow dissolved, incinerating into an explosion of red and black shadow essence. "Okay, Big Bro," said Nanako. "Your turn!"

Yu turned his attention to the other two shadows that were now slinking forward, attracted by the noise. He decided not to think too hard about the whole empathy thing. Yes, if Nanako was turning into an early childhood sociopath, then it probably was his fault, no matter how much he wanted to deny that, or wanted to blame Yosuke for having not kept her safe enough during her brief stint as the wild card. It was his fault, because the only reason Nanako had even been placed in that position was due to his actions, or rather, his inaction and his need for everyone else to pick up the slack.

"Whee!" sang Nanako, whizzing a ball of fire in the direction of one of the advancing shadows.

At least, thought Yu resignedly, she seemed to be having a good time.

"Nanako!" barked Dojima. "Look out, watch your left side!"

"Huh?" asked Nanako. "Oh, oops!" The second shadow, the one she hadn't been paying attention to suddenly lunged for that open left side, and Nanako tripped as she tried to scurry out of the way. Yu was there in a second, blocking the attack with his sword and then swiping forward, slashing the shadow across the face and sending it staggering back.

Behind them, Dojima breathed out a frustrated little sigh of relief. "Jeez…" he muttered.

From where he was lounging against a nearby wall, Adachi snickered. "Same old Dojima-san," he said. "Typical hard-ass, even on his own kid. Come on, I thought she was doing pretty well…for a ten year old, anyway. Give the kid a break."

Dojima didn't even bother to glare at him. "Shut up," he snarled.

Yu remarked to himself that this situation had gotten out of hand pretty fast. When Nanako had insisted on going into the TV world to train, determined to be just as much of a big kid as the rest of the team, Yu hadn't bothered to try and talk her out of it. Instead, he had volunteered to go with her, partially to make himself feel better, and partially to pacify Uncle Dojima. Unfortunately he'd failed in at least the latter goal, and Dojima had refused to let either of them back into the TV unless he was there to keep an eye on them.

Yu had almost hoped that having her Dad along would encourage Nanako to give up the adventure, but instead, she'd been delighted. Apparently she was very excited to have a chance to show Dad how good she could be at summoning her persona. Yu was just happy that she'd selected Icarus, who looked so innocent in comparison to the terrifying impression that Thanatos gave to anyone who watched him emerge from the inner workings of tiny little Nanako's soul. The last time he'd seen her summon Thanatos, Dojima had gone on a bender for almost three days, and it had been Yu who'd ended up picking him up off the floor and trying to talk him into the idea that even though Nanako was now wielding the skills of a slew of omnipotent monsters, she was still his little girl.

Everything had been going as well as could possibly be expected, until Nanako had insisted on going through the Velvet Room to say good morning to Adachi. Adachi, as usual, had been bored out of his mind, and had jumped at the chance to piss Dojima off as soon as he'd seen the beleaguered look on his former partner's face. Apparently intent for the very first time on completing his attendant's duties, he'd insisted on following them out into the TV world where he'd so far done nothing but watch and snigger from the sidelines. Between Adachi's snide commentary from the wings, and Nanako's eager and unguarded combat tactics, Dojima's face had already turned an alarming shade of rage-tinted red, much to Yu's alarm and Adachi's malicious delight.

"Hey, no fair," muttered Nanako, glaring at the shadow that had just had the audacity to attack her. Yu had Zao Gongen pound the shadow with God's Hand, smashing it and effectively dissolving it, leaving only one shadow remaining.

"Come on, Nanako," mumbled Dojima. "Haven't we had enough of this, yet? It's almost lunchtime. Aren't you hungry?"

"Nope!" Nanako shook her head. "Icarus," she called, "Heat wave!"

"Nice," muttered Adachi, raising an eyebrow and looking genuinely impressed as Icarus demolished the remaining shadow with a blast of energy that sliced it right through the middle. "You're getting pretty good at this, Nanako-chan. This is a hell of a lot better than that time against the snake shadow thing, anyway."

"Don't encourage her," growled Dojima.

Adachi gave him a belligerent look. "Why? Jeez, I bet a little encouragement is a nice change for her…not like she probably gets much of it from Dad, right?"

Dojima turned on Adachi, his face twitching with barely contained rancor, and Yu wasn't sure for a moment if Dojima was going to strike the other man, or just shout at him. Involuntarily, he winced.

"My teacher," interrupted Nanako wistfully, "always gives me a sticker when I do a good job. It's a star sticker."

She waited, watching her father expectantly, until both Dojima and Adachi turned to stare at her.

"What?" asked Adachi. "What, you want a sticker? Seriously? Where the hell am I supposed to get a sticker? Does this look like that kind of place to you?"

Nanako shrugged innocently. "It's the Velvet Room," she reminded him. "There's everything here."

Dojima was patting his pockets in frustration. "Used to keep them on me," he mumbled. "When you were a kid, we did that too…gave you gold stars every time you remembered to clean your room. I wonder what happened to those. I haven't seen them since before we lost your mother." Reaching into his pockets, he pulled them both out, revealing an impressive selection of lint balls, half a broken crayon, and a crumpled up piece of paper. He took out the piece of paper, smoothed it out, and then pulled something off of one end of it before shoving the paper, the crayon, and most of the lint back into his pocket. "Got some tape here," he said. "Sorry, that's all I-hey!"

Adachi reached over and snatched the piece of tape out of Dojima's fingers. "Let me see that," he said. "C'mere, Nanako-chan. You want a sticker? I'll make you a damn sticker."

Obediently, Nanako walked over, and Adachi stuck the piece of tape on to the sleeve of her jumper. A pen appeared out of nowhere between his fingers, and he began scribbling intently on the piece of tape. Nanako stayed very still and patient until he'd finished.

"There," he said. "A flower sticker. See?"

Nanako tried to peer down her own sleeve at the tape. "Thank you!" she said, beaming at him. "It's sort of a sticker! But, um, it was supposed to be a star."

Adachi sighed. "Right, yeah, a star, I forgot." Turning to Dojima, he asked, "you got another piece of tape?"

While Dojima and Adachi argued over the question of the tape, Yu watched Nanako's face. She spent a moment looking at the sticker, then caught Yu watching her out of the corner of her eye. Turning towards him, she gave him one of her most radiant little girl smiles. Yu was instantly suspicious. Something was up, here.

"You're the one that makes magic things appear out of the thin fucking air!" Dojima was yelling at Adachi, who flinched as the senior detective's voice rose. "So you get the goddamn tape, okay? This is ridiculous, why are we even here in the first place? Nanako, come on, we're leaving. I've gotta go into the station, there are things that-!"

Suddenly, Yu thought he saw something dark moving off in the corner. The shadow was on them in a single leap, catching Nanako totally by surprise and knocking her to the ground. She shrieked, and Yu was just about to summon back Zao Gongen and go in for the kill when three loud gunshots pierced the air. The shadow screamed in pain, and then burst into red and black essence, exploding where it stood.

For what felt like a very long moment, nobody moved.

"Damn," muttered Adachi. "The hell did that come from? I hate this place…" The gun in his hand was still smoking, and Magatsu Izanagi was looming up over his shoulder, peering down at Yu with that terrible, empty stare.

"Um…thank you, Adachi-san," murmured Nanako, looking a little bit shaken. She peeled the piece of tape off of her arm, and stuck it on to Adachi's sleeve. "I think you did the best job…so you're the one who gets the sticker. Should be a star, though…but a flower's good, too."

Adachi blinked at his sleeve. "Wait…ugh, really? What'd you have to go and do that for? Now there's gonna be that sticky shit all over my shirt…great."

As they began to walk back towards the Velvet Room door, Dojima snorted derisively. "Quit whining, Adachi. You know how many stickers I've had to peel off my jacket over the last ten years?"

Adachi looked thoughtful. "Yeah?" he asked. "Uh…so, you got any pointers?"

**Fin. **


	40. Commitment: Chapter One

**Commitment**

**Summary: **Sooner or later, everyone has to pay their dues. She'd told Mitsuru that she couldn't leave because of the demands of her job. Now, it was time to actually get up, go back to work, and face the consequences.

**Character Focus: Minako, Dojima**

**Chapter One**

Eventually, Minako had to face it. She'd put it off for as long as she could, but that morning she woke up and realized for the first time in weeks that it was finally time to go to work.

Minako hadn't been to the station since her eyesight had returned, and she was a little bit horrified when she went through her closet and pulled out the skirts and blouses she'd been using as "work clothes." Most of them weren't exactly the colors or the styles that she'd been imagining, and her mental picture of what she'd looked like behind the desk warped now into something mismatched, garish, and stupidly unassuming. It took her several minutes to choose something that she felt looked professional enough to make a comeback in.

She brushed her teeth, did her hair, took a few deep, calming breaths, and then tried leaving the house.

Two paces outside the door, she froze. Every few seconds, the image of Dojima's furious face filled her mind's eye, and she re-lost her nerve to try going back in to see him.

Instead of going straight to work, therefore, she turned around, went back into the house, and stepped through into the TV.

Tohru was there in his chair, drumming miserable fingers against one cheek as he watched the door. Igor was there, too, and that, thought Minako, was probably the reason that Tohru wasn't up and running around killing shadows, or traipsing around and exploring the TV world the way he usually and restlessly did when left unsupervised for too long.

"Hey!" Tohru's face lit up and soon as he saw her, and he jumped out of his chair, dumping the Persona Compendium off his lap and on to the floor. Minako was sure she saw a vein bulge in Igor's temple as he bent down to retrieve the precious book.

Completely ignoring his reluctant "master," Tohru hurried over to Minako. He pulled her to him and kissed her, then stopped, frowned, and stepped back for a moment, raising an eyebrow.

"You want to seem e do a trick?" he asked.

Minako smiled. "I don't think there are any coins in my ear today, thank you."

"Nah." Tohru shook his head. "That's kid stuff. Today, I'm gonna read your future. You ready?"

"Ready," agreed Minako.

He made a big show of biting his lip, closing his eyes, and thinking so hard that it wrinkled is forehead for a long moment. Then, he opened his eyes, and nodded.

"Your day today…is gonna suck. Like…really suck," he informed her.

She sighed. "How did you guess?"

"You're dressed for work," he informed her. "You're going to the station, right? See? That right there, that was a brilliant, Tohru Adachi deduction. Uh…seriously, though, you going back in to the station? Really? That's…uh, maybe the worst idea I've heard all week. Not that I hear much from anybody but Creepy over here, but still." He shrugged

Minako frowned. "I don't have a choice," she insisted. "I have to go in eventually. I can't just keep hiding from it forever."

"Now that's where you're wrong," said Tohru. "Hey, I mean, you haven't gone in to work in how long? Three weeks? More? I'd say you lucked out. They've given up on you, why go back to them? This is your big chance to slack off and get a break without actually having to quit your job! What's not to love? It's a pretty good deal. I'd take it."

"I know you would," murmured Minako. "But I can't. I made a commitment."

"And," Tohru reminded her, "then…you broke it. Pretty spectacularly. Three weeks of unexcused absences…uh, the teacher's not gonna be too happy. Trust me, I used to work with the guy, and even I never took three whole weeks off in a row. Man, it's not pretty just thinking about how pissed of Dojima-san's gonna be. You're a brave little dumbass, you know? The brave little dumbass that could. Better off just sticking here, with me. It's…probably a safer move."

For a moment, Minako reflected with some wry amusement on the fact that Tohru Adachi, a notorious escaped murderer was now suggesting that it was safer to spend the day with him in a world that no one else knew existed than it would be to go in and face the wrath of her erstwhile boss.

"Thanks," she told him, "but actually, I was hoping for a little moral support."

Adachi sighed. "Yeah moral support, right. Um. Please don't die. If you do, I'll be bored as hell."

Minako rolled her eyes. It looked like that was the best moral support that she was likely to get.

"Don't worry," said Minako, as she made her way back towards the door. "If I see him looking murderous, I'll just find the nearest TV and jump into it. Then you can protect me."

Tohru snorted a derisive laugh. "You crazy? He'll probably follow you, and then we'll have him in here, mad as hell and bellowing at everybody. That's the only nice thing about being locked up – I don't have to deal with that! Nope, you're on your own this time."

"Oh," said Minako, sweetly and sarcastically. "Thank you so much."

"No problem." Tohru waved a hand dismissively at her, and sat back down in his chair. "Best of luck, you're gonna need it."

Minako sighed.

She walked to the bus stop and rode the bus all the way to the station, thinking the entire time of all the potential excuses she could make that might soften the blow even the littlest bit. She could say, of course, that she'd been feeling too sick and weak after the return of her persona to even think about coming to work in the morning. She could even, if she wanted, say that she'd actually told Dojima long ago that she'd have to take those three weeks off, and that he'd signed off on it and had just forgotten all about it in light of recent events. Most of the station staff would probably believe that, since it was the sort of thing that Dojima actually did on a regular basis.

In the end, though, none of it would do any good. Minako was sure of that, even if she wished she wasn't. Dojima knew the real reason, and had probably been turning that reason over in his head since the day of the big Velvet Room altercation. Minako was terrified of what his reaction would be to her lying for so long about Adachi. She'd been too much of a coward to face him, especially while she was dealing with Yosuke's vicious anger, and the disappointment and dislike of so many of the other people in Inaba who'd she considered close friends for so long.

At least they had been subtle about it, but Dojima wasn't familiar with the concept of subtlety. He'd do one of two things, definitely. He'd either give her the cold shoulder and blatantly refuse to work with her or anywhere near her, or he'd ream her out horribly in front of the entire station…possibly more than once. Perhaps he'd do it every time she had the misfortune to walk within shouting distance.

By the time she got off the bus outside the station, Minako had made her decision. There was nothing she could do but meet this head on with cold, hard honesty and remorse. That might not work, but there was nothing else worth trying.

With that firmly in mind, she pulled open the door, and took three, quick steps across the floor.

"Good morning!" she called, forcing a cheerful smile.

Around her, all activity ground to a halt. Everyone was staring. Minako felt herself deflate, just a bit.


	41. Commitment: Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

For just a moment, Minako wished that she was still blind. Back then, a silence like this one would have been terrible and frustrating. Now, however it was worse, because she could actually see all the startled faces of the employees watching her, and then turning to glance in confusion at each other while Minako took the very slow, very long walk all the way across the room towards Dojima's desk.

Dojima did not look startled. He did not look confused. He did not even look up from his paperwork. The only sign that Minako got of his being absolutely livid was the vein that had begun bulging in his temple, and the way his face was slowly turning an alarming shade of purplish red.

"Dojima-san," she murmured, although it came out much more softly and a bit more strangled than she'd intended. Minako's face was sweating.

Dojima didn't say anything. He didn't acknowledge her at all.

Okay, thought Minako. So, it's going to be the cold shoulder treatment. I can handle that. I was prepared for that. This is probably better than the shouting. The shouting is terrible, and gives me a headache, anyway.

She was relieved to see that there was no one sitting at her desk, since she'd sort of expected that they'd have found someone to fill her position by now. Then again, she reminded herself, this had been a position created specifically for her, a position that hadn't really been necessary in the first place but which Dojima had agreed to create mostly because Yu and Nanako had begged him to. That thought, if anything, made her feel much worse about the amount of work she'd missed.

As Minako sat down at her desk, the whir of activity slowly began again around the station. People began to lose interest in Minako, and to go back to whatever it is they were doing. Relieved, Minako let herself slump slightly in her seat. The worst, she decided, was probably over.

Seconds later, she was sure that she'd been wrong.

"Arisato!" bellowed Dojima. Minako sat up so straight that it hurt.

"Sir?" she asked. It came out in a squeak.

"Where the hell is my coffee?" demanded Dojima.

Bouncing up out of her seat like a rocket, Minako rushed off to get the coffee. Hey, she thought as she ran. At least he's talking to me, sort of. That's progress, right?

She made the coffee and then rushed back to Dojima's desk, placing it carefully down in front of her and then standing at attention while he took the first sip. He grunted, nodded, put it back down and then returned to his work, leaving Minako still awkwardly standing beside him.

Several minutes elapsed in silence before she decided to speak up. "Um, Dojima-san," she mumbled, "I…I'm sorry about…"

"Get back to your desk," snarled Dojima.

Minako blinked. "But, sir, please, if you'd just let me apologize, I'm sure that I owe you that, at least."

Dojima picked up the coffee again. He took another swig, slammed it down on to the table, and then told her, without even glancing in her direction, "I gave you an order, Arisato."

"You're angry," murmured Minako. "Of course you are, you have every right to be, I just wanted to tell you that I-!"

"I'm not angry." Dojima sighed, and spun around in his chair to face her for the first time. "Look, you do what you want. Either get back to you desk and start answering those damn phones, or get out. I don't need your apologies because it doesn't matter to me what you do. We don't need you, here. You're non-essential staff. So just make a decision and get out of my face, I have work to do, and so does everybody else."

He turned away from her again, disinterested, and Minako felt as though she'd been struck. "Yes, sir," she managed, before retreating back to her own desk and cowering in the chair.

She felt like an idiot, and a particularly self-interested one at that. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. Looking around at all the other station employees, she watched them going about their various tasks and arguing amongst themselves as the tempo of the station picked up and carried on as though there had never been an interruption, or she'd never come in to disrupt their daily routine. Somehow, this hadn't been what she'd expected, and now she felt foolish for having expected anything else.

He didn't even care that I'd stopped coming to work, she thought. He wasn't angry, he didn't miss me, and it didn't bother him at all,. It didn't bother any of them. Nobody cared. Maybe nobody even noticed until they saw me walk through the doors and realized just how long it had been since they'd seen me last. That's why he never came by the house or never even sent one of the others to check on me or shout at me. I'm irrelevant. Of course I am. I wasn't important around here from the start.

For a long moment, Minako contemplated leaving. Dojima had told her that she could go, and the ugly realization of being unwanted was mortifying enough to make her think that maybe she should take him up on his offer, and get out before this got any more unpleasant. After all, someone was bound to ask how she could magically see again, and suddenly all of the explanations she'd been practicing in her head seemed trite and stupid. She didn't want to bother with explaining.

Worse, she realized, they might not even ask. After all, they were busy people. What if no one thought it was important enough to even question her about? What if no one had really even noticed?

The phone chose that moment to ring. Minako's hand automatically shot out for it, and then she paused, glancing down at the phone uncertainly. She didn't have to take this call. She didn't have to do anything. After all, they didn't really want her here. At the moment, she didn't really want to be here.

But, said that little voice in the back of her mind, I haven't shown them yet. I haven't shown them what I'm capable of, now that I can see again and I can do all of the same things that they can do. Maybe I could be really good at this job. Maybe I could be really good at any job. I could be invaluable, now, and I could be worth something. Maybe I could make them notice me. Maybe I could make them forget that I was missing, this time, and make them think of me as part of the team.

The phone was still ringing. From across the room, heads were now turning to glance in Minako's direction, apparently wondering why she was just sitting there with a stupidly stoic look on her face and failing to answer the call.

She picked it up. "Good morning," she said, in what she hoped was her most pleasant phone voice. "Inaba Police Station. Is this an emergency?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she almost thought she saw Dojima nod once in her direction before returning to his coffee.


End file.
